Shakedown
by anonymous moose
Summary: Peacetime is anything but ordinary as Shepard and Garrus return to duty after a long and interminable medical leave. Now, she must build another crew, a mixture of new and old, to prepare for a shakedown cruise that only she and Hackett know the truth about, and face a threat that only the crew of the starship Normandy could be trusted to handle. Shepard/Vakarian.
1. Home Again, Home Again

Shepard turned away and took a couple steps, hands behind her back. When she turned back, she could see all of them. Most were packed into the glass-walled conference room, gathered around the meeting table, but six or so were just outside, still within earshot.

She had meant to have the mask on for this, Commander Shepard addressing her crew, but as she looked at them, she couldn't help herself. She broke into a wide, honest smile.

"God, it's good to see you people again."

A wave of grins and quiet pride spread across the room. "Feeling's mutual, ma'am," one of them called from the back. Shepard couldn't tell who it was, but her heart swelled. She allowed herself another moment to enjoy the feeling of being back where she belonged, and then she got right down to business.

"Suppose you all want to know why I've dragged you out of bed at such an ungodly hour," she said lightly. "I haven't had a chance to tell you since I got back yesterday, but I wanted you to know exactly what's happening.

"The _Normandy _isn't back on active duty just yet. The brass, and more importantly the ground crew, want her to take a little shakedown cruise first. Ease out the kinks and make sure she's running as smooth as she can be. She'll probably be due for another refit when time and resources allow, but right now she's spaceworthy, and she's needed. That's good enough for me.

"Over the next two days, I'm going to be reviewing personnel files and dossiers, and requesting transfers. So there will be some new faces showing up here, as well as some old ones." Shepard's expression grew stern, and her tone serious. "I don't want any favoritism, or hazing, or any high school bullshit. I'm picking my people, same as always. If that isn't enough for you, then you can request a transfer to another ship."

Shepard paused a moment and her gaze roamed over the small crowd. Everyone seemed to stiffen, and no one said a word.

"In the meantime, we'll start with the obvious. Joker?" All eyes shifted to him, standing at the opposite head of the table. "I want to keep you on as flight lieutenant. Unless you've gotten a better offer."

"Shyeah, right!" Joker grinned and adjusted his ballcap. "Like there's any better ship than my baby."

She smiled, then looked to Joker's left and it quickly faded. "EDI, I'd like you to stay on as well, but if you're not ready-"

"I appreciate your concern, Commander." EDI's voice and tone were the same as always, businesslike, somehow both cold and warm. Her face, however, was different. Her expression was entirely impassive, and her lips didn't move when she spoke. "But I am able to perform my duties."

Shepard fought down a grimace. It had taken months, but the AI techs had finally managed to reboot EDI, with the help of some of the remaining geth. Initially, she could only communicate through text - the first thing she had done upon waking was print out the lyrics to 'Daisy Bell.' Shepard had never seen Joker so happy.

But while she had recovered most of her cognitive processes, she wasn't the same. She couldn't be everywhere with the ease she had before. No more taking her co-opted Cerberus synthetic body out on combat missions with the ground team. She could barely be in it at all, needing most of her processes to keep the ship running properly, so she didn't have the granularity of control that she had before. In a crisis, she'd have to dive out of the body entirely and devote all she had to the ship. But she had recovered greatly in a short amount of time. There was the hope that she would eventually be back to normal.

That didn't stop Shepard from feeling a sharp stab of guilt every time she turned that impassive gaze to her.

"I don't doubt it," she said. "But I don't want your duties to impede your recovery."

"They will not." EDI didn't blink. She hadn't blinked since she came in. Shepard doubted if she could anymore, not that she had ever needed to. "And besides," she said in a surprisingly human tone of amusement, casting a pointed glance at Joker, "I am not the only cripple aboard able to do their duty."

Joker's eyebrows shot up and he had to work very hard to stifle his laughter. Some of the other crewmen were not so successful. Shepard felt a smile tugging its way back onto her face.

"Fair enough." Shepard turned to the next crewman, but heard EDI say somewhat apologetically to Joker, "That was a joke, Jeff."

"Traynor," she called out. "You bring your toothbrush this time?"

Traynor actually reached into her pocket and pulled it out, holding it above her head. That sent another wave of laughter through the assembled crew.

Shepard smirked. "Then I suppose you're prepared to stay on at comms."

"Absolutely, Commander!" Her British accent sounded a little less exotic after months of recovery in London. "Wouldn't miss it for the world!"

"And Chakwas, what are you still doing here?" Shepard said. "I'd say you've earned a very comfortable retirement."

The silver haired woman crossed her arms defiantly. "I should say so, Commander," she said in that haughty tone of voice only a ship's doctor could use on her captain, "but so have you. And yet, here you are."

Shepard smiled softly and nodded. "Here I am."

The doctor beamed. "And here we both shall stay."

That settled that, as far as Shepard was concerned. She moved onto the next. "Adams." He straightened, standing near the back. "You fine staying down in engineering?"

"Only if you'll have me, Commander." Ever the professional.

"Can't think of anyone better suited, Adams." He smiled and stood a little straighter. Shepard shifted her gaze over his shoulder. "And you two. You okay with serving under a captain who's better than the both of you at Skyllian Five?"

"Luckier, ma'am." Donnelly corrected in his Scottish brogue. "Not better."

Daniels turned and gave him a look of complete shock before elbowing him hard in the stomach. "Ken!" She turned and straightened. "We're more than happy to serve, Commander."

Daniels and Donnelly. Somehow, it just wouldn't be the same without them down in engineering. "Glad to have you both."

Shepard looked to the right side of the conference table. "Cortez, I know for a fact that you got an offer to serve aboard the _Arcadia_. It's a hell of a thing, to be posted on the flagship."

Cortez looked a bit surprised. "Thank you, ma'am," he said, "but... it's not the _Normandy_."

"You can go where you want, Steve. No one would think any less of you, least of all me."

Cortez actually seemed to consider it for a moment, but only a moment. His eyes said it all. "I'd like to stay, ma'am."

"Damn right, Esteban," Vega said to her left. "What would you do without me, anyway?"

Cortez grinned. "Have an intelligent conversation for once, Mr. Vega." A brief pulse of laughter spread through the group while Vega crossed his arms.

"Speaking of," Shepard said. "I want you as marine detail commander, Vega."

His eyebrows rose. Shepard plowed on ahead. "You're a bit overqualified to be cleaning guns down in the armory, I'm afraid. You ready for this?"

Vega blinked. He uncrossed his arms and straightened. "Hell, Lola, if you think I am," he said, "who am I to argue?"

"Damn right," Shepard mimicked with a small grin. "Don't make me regret it, James."

He shook his head. Vega could look serious when he wanted to. "Hell no, Commander."

And that left...

"Garrus." He stood across from Vega, on the opposite side of the table, and closest to Shepard. He linked his hands behind his back, at parade rest.

"You're my XO."

His mandibles moved. She could tell he had almost flared them out in surprise. She hadn't discussed it with him, but it had been the easiest decision she'd ever made.

She looked out at the whole of the crew. She kept her voice firm and her expression impassive. "If anyone has a problem with that, now is the time to speak. Your objection will be noted in my report."

Everyone stood stock still and at attention. A handful of crewmen, including Joker and Chakwas, glanced around ready to pounce on anyone who said anything. No one did.

Shepard counted to ten, then took a breath and lowered her eyes. She didn't think anyone would object, given their shared history, but it had still been a concern. "Very well. If anyone would prefer to talk in private afterwards, I'll be available."

She looked over near the door to the conference room. "Campbell? Westmoreland? You two are down in the armory. Doubt there's much need to guard the war room anymore. Copeland, I want to keep you on as yeoman. You've done a hell of a job so far. Patel, Rolston, I want you in the CIC..."

Shepard remembered every name, every position, and every service record. It wasn't much, since the ship was running a skeleton crew at the moment. But every time she said someone's name, they seemed to stand a little straighter, a little prouder._ 'Commander Shepard remembered my name,' _they thought. Of course she did. They were her crew.

When she was finished, she linked her hands behind her back and nodded.

"You all have your orders. In three days, we ship out to Alpha Centauri. I want the ship running at a hundred and ten percent by then."

"Exceeding the ship's design specifications by such a margin would be hazardous, Commander."

She gave EDI a skeptical look. Without even a perfunctory attempt at replicating human facial expressions, it could be even harder to tell when she joking. Shepard looked to Joker for clarification. He shrugged helplessly.

"I'm sure you'll find a way to make it happen," she said, hedging her bets on 'joke.' She returned her attention to the group at large.

"And once again?" Shepard smiled. "It's damn good to be here. Dismissed."

They began to file out. A few followed protocol and saluted, but most didn't. Shepard had never insisted on it, at least not for her.

"Shepard," Garrus said quietly. "Could I have a word?"

She nodded. "Sure. Just give me a minute. Joker!" she called out. He turned. "Stick around."

After everyone else had gone, and they were the last three left in the conference room, Shepard sighed.

"I didn't want to bring this up, Jeff," she said, the use of his given name making him tense, "but I know you got an offer too."

He crossed his arms. "Turned it down."

"I know." She rested her hands on her hips. "It was a pretty major promotion."

"Don't know what you want me to say, Shepard."

"I want you to say you didn't turn it down because of me," she said, keeping her voice tight and controlled. "That you're not hurting your career out of loyalty."

Joker's brow furrowed. "I don't see myself hurting my career at all. Some of us aren't eager to climb the ranks."

"You don't ever see yourself in a command position?"

He smiled wryly, almost a sneer. "I seem like an inspiring leader of men to you?"

Shepard opened her mouth again, but he cut her off. "Shepard, all I want to do - all I ever wanted to do - was fly. I'm doing that, and I'm doing it in the best ship in the fleet, with the best crew in the fleet, for the best commanding officer in the fleet. Why would I want to change any of that?"

After she chewed on that thought for a moment, her head bowed a little. "Well. Put it like that."

"You know me. The Great Communicator." Joker breathed out a laugh, then, looking a little awkward, stuck out his hand. "Appreciate the thought, though."

Shepard raised her eyes, but not her head. She clasped his hand and shook. "Last time I told someone they were better off without me, they weren't so understanding."

"Then stop doing it." Joker grinned. "Seriously, you're like the hottest, most stacked chick on campus who everyone wants to go out with, but you think you're hideous and you've secretly got anorexia or something. Metaphorically."

Shepard successfully fought down a smile, but she let it creep into her tone. "Thanks, Great Communicator."

"I do what I can." Joker glanced over at Garrus, who had been waiting patiently off to the side with his hands behind his back. "I'll leave you and your XO to, uh, _debrief_ each other."

Joker quickly hobbled out after that last comment, leaving Shepard and Garrus alone. He closed the distance between them by a few steps but kept his hands behind his back. That bothered her more than it should.

"If you're not comfortable with the position I can find someone else," she blurted out. "It just made sense at the time."

"No, no," he said quickly, mandibles twitching. "I can do it. I just hope that... I hope it doesn't change anything between us."

Now that was unexpected. "Why would it change anything?"

Garrus looked a bit sheepish, a bit reluctant to meet her eyes, and he kept his posture too straight and stiff. It wasn't like him. "I'm a bad turian, Shepard. I believe in duty and service and all of the typical ideals, but I've never exactly been one to follow the rules or let orders go unquestioned. If you want me as your XO, I'll do the job to the best of my ability, but... I'm afraid I might not be what you need. And, well... it's selfish, but I'd rather that our work didn't affect our relationship."

Shepard laid a hand on top of his shoulder, against his collar. Planetside was one thing, but she was still a little uncomfortable being intimate with him aboard the ship. Outside of her cabin, anyway.

"Garrus, this isn't a turian ship. I don't know what you think an XO does, but if there's one thing they don't do, it's follow orders blindly. You remember Miranda. It was rare when she didn't have some critique of what I was doing."

His brow plates lowered. "But she always fell into line."

"And how is that any different from now?" A brief smile flickered across her face. "I know this is new for you. Back on the SR-1, you never really had a formal position, and the SR-2 wasn't exactly flying anyone's flag but mine. But this isn't different. I'm still a Spectre, for whatever that's worth these days, and this is my ship."

"It's not really about that, it's..." He sighed in exasperation. "I don't know. It seems like a big change."

"It's not." She let her hand reach up and rest on his cheek. Downright scandalous, Shepard."Believe me, the reason I wanted you as XO is because of how we work together."

"Then..." He leaned unconsciously into her touch. "What's changed?"

"What's changed is you won't be spending all day cooped up in the damn battery calibrating giant guns anymore." Shepard grinned. "What's changed is you have your own office and you'll interact with the crew more. You'll be in charge of day-to-day operations, you'll aid in tactical planning and execution, and if I leave the ship without you, as unlikely as that scenario is, you'll be in command."

He seemed particularly surprised at that last part, but Shepard soldiered on, not letting him interrupt.

"And if I do or say something profoundly stupid, you tell me. I start stepping out of line, you pull me back. I start to slip -" she reached out her other hand and pulled one of his from behind his back, placing it on her waist, "- you catch me."

Garrus seemed unsure for another second or so, then he visibly relaxed. "I can do that."

Shepard's hand slipped down from his mandible to his collar. She looked off to the side somewhere. "I hate to bring this up again, after what Joker just said, but-"

"Shepard." He pulled her a bit closer. "If there's anywhere I belong, anywhere I've ever wanted to be, it's on your six or by your side. Wherever you need me."

Shepard saw the look in his eyes, the simple, honest intensity. She really had to stop trying to push people away. If she did it to Garrus again, he might actually take offense.

"Besides, Victus can take care of himself." He shrugged, that easy charm making its way back into his flanging voice and body language. "And I doubt he really needs a Reaper advisor anymore, now that you've, you know. Killed them all."

"How sad for you," she said with a grin, more than happy that she'd eased his mind. "I'll be sure to consider how it will affect your livelihood next time I save the galaxy."

Garrus tilted his head in that way she'd come to identify as 'amused.' "Please do."

Shepard, with some reluctance, pulled his hand away from her waist and stepped back. "I should start making some calls."

"Yeah," he replied with a nod. "I suppose I should go and acquaint myself with my new office."

"Don't let it go to your head," she said, heading for the door. "It's still not as big as my cabin."

"My old apartment wasn't as big as your cabin," he shot back as he followed. Shepard headed left, Garrus right. Before she left the room, she cast a glance back over her shoulder and found him doing the same. She turned away and blushed. God, they were such fucking teenagers, sometimes.

She headed into what had once been the war room. Now, rather than monitoring the construction of the Crucible, it monitored the movements and activities of the galactic fleet in the Sol system. A giant holo-image of Earth, surrounded by a cloud of ships with shuttles and fighters slowly buzzing around between them, occupied the center of the room.

She skirted around it and went towards the private comm room in the back. The quantum entanglement communicator had somehow remained undamaged in the final battle of the war. Good thing, since it was unlikely they would have been able to properly repair it afterwards, given their limited resources.

She fired it up. "EDI," she spoke to the air. It took an instant too long for the blue holographic orb to project itself over a nearby console. Shepard felt another pang of guilt, imagining EDI's head slumping as she left her body to speak with her.

"Yes, Commander?" EDI, for her part, sounded entirely normal. Shepard quashed the guilt and remained professional.

"Can you get me Liara on the horn? I haven't had her contact information uploaded to this console yet."

"Of course, Shepard." A brief pause. "I have her."

"Thanks, EDI."

"Logging you out, Shepard." The blue orb disappeared, and Shepard breathed a little easier. Liara's image flickered into life in front of her, large as life and tinged blue and white with the grid of the holoprojector.

"Shepard." She smiled, looking up from a datapad. "Did you need something?"

Shepard smiled wryly. Liara was the only private citizen she knew who had her own QEC. She wondered where she got it and how, whether it was something the old Shadow Broker had or not, but maybe she didn't actually want to know.

"Remember when I asked you to put together some dossiers for me?"

"Of course. You need them now?"

"The sooner, the better."

"I'll have them sent to your private terminal." She looked down at her datapad and began typing something out. "How's the _Normandy_?"

She sighed. "It's not perfect, it's still got most of the rough patches it did when we had to evacuate during the invasion, and it'll be a while before it can have a full and proper refit."

Liara's big eyes lifted up from her pad. A smile played at her lips. "But?"

"But it's home, Liara." Shepard took a deep breath. "Recycled air and all. I haven't felt this good in months."

"I'm glad to hear it, Shepard."

"You know there's always a place for you here, Liara."

"I know." Her eyes migrated back to the pad. "I can't. But I know."

"Yeah." Shepard hugged her elbows. "Same with Wrex and Tali."

Liara looked up and smiled reassuringly. "There's always Garrus."

Shepard grinned. Truer words had never been spoken. "There is."

"And Kaidan, as well."

"He's a Spectre, now," she said, gesturing vaguely with one hand. "He has his own work to do."

Liara looked back down to her datapad, fingers typing away. "I'm sure he'd appreciate the offer, though."

Shepard narrowed her eyes and averted her gaze. Liara was right, of course. She should make the offer. They'd cleared the air, things were fine between them. He would refuse, in all probability, but it would be a betrayal of their friendship not to ask.

"I'll call him later."

Liara nodded. "Dossiers should be making their way to you now, Shepard." She looked up. "If there's anything else, don't hesitate to ask."

"I won't." Shepard lowered her arms and nodded. "Thanks, Liara."

"Always." She turned and walked away and her image flickered out into nonexistence. Shepard began to turn and leave, head for the CIC, when EDI piped up.

"There's a priority call from Admiral Hackett for you Shepard."

"Patch it through." Subconsciously, she tugged the bottom of her jacket and straightened her uniform before lacing her hands behind her back. She may have been a Spectre, existing outside the chain of command, but she'd always respect Hackett. He had done too much for her not to.

His image flickered into being. The admiral's appearance hadn't changed much since the war - a bit more gray in his well-trimmed beard, a few more lines etched into his craggy face, another small scar added to a growing collection - but his eyes were as strong as ever, even through a hologram. "Commander."

"Admiral. What can I do for you?"

"Just wanted to confirm when you'll be departing for Alpha Centauri."

"We're expecting three days from now, sir."

He nodded curtly. "Good. The sooner, the better."

Shepard shifted her weight. "I'm still not entirely comfortable with this."

"I know. Believe me." Hackett sighed. "I'd feel the same way, if it were my ship."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for, and I can't discuss it with my XO?" Shepard grimaced. "I don't like being in the dark, sir, and I like keeping my crew in the dark even less."

"I understand, and I know you trust your people, but it is paramount that this not spread any further than it has to. For right now, that means you, me, and what remains of the Systems Alliance government. You'll receive further information once you're actually in the system and _Normandy_'s stealth drive is engaged." He frowned. "Until then, you're just going to have to trust me when I say that this mission is the highest priority. I haven't seen reports like this since the war ended, Commander. And from what we can tell? The Reapers never even touched Alpha Centauri."

"Could be a coincidence," Shepard ventured. "Could be they didn't know we had an installation there."

"I don't believe in coincidences like that, Commander." He crossed his arms and his eyes drifted. "But I'd be more than happy to be wrong."

Shepard's jaw clenched. She hadn't seen him this worried since the war. It made him look old. Tired. She didn't like it.

"Whatever's out there, Admiral," she said, steeling her voice. "We'll take care of it."

He looked up and actually smiled. "If there's anyone who can, Shepard, it's you and that ship." He uncrossed his arms and nodded. "I'll contact you again in three days. Hackett out."

He stepped back and his image flickered and died. Shepard was left alone, and despite her words and the Admiral's confidence, she was somehow more worried than she'd been before. Her crew trusted that this was nothing more than routine. She had lied right to their faces, and despite it's apparent necessity, she'd hated every second of it.

Shepard thought about what happened on her last shakedown cruise. The maiden voyage of the _Normandy_ SR-1, and where that had led.

She quickly turned and left. She had dossiers to consider and calls to make.


	2. Certainty, or Lack Thereof

"No, not 'Gardener!' Gardner! G-A-R-D... yes, that one!"

Shepard closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. This had taken long enough that she had started using her omni-tool instead of her terminal so she could pace around the room while she waited. She should just hang up, throw the damn thing across the room and forget about Gardner. Get some other mess sergeant.

But she couldn't. It just wasn't the way she was wired.

"Hello?" Gardner's voice piped into her ear.

"This Rupert Gardner?" Shepard asked, making absolutely sure that she wasn't talking to yet another Robert Gardener.

"Yeah," he said, sounding suspicious. "Who's askin'?"

Shepard lowered her hand from her ear and tapped away on the omni-tool, requesting a vid link. In a moment, Gardner's face appeared, projected above her wrist.

"Commander!" He startled, eyebrows shooting up, and quickly saluted with his other hand. "What can I do for you?"

"_Normandy_'s back in orbit and she needs a mess sergeant." Shepard wanted to keep this brief. She had more important positions to fill.

"Really? Well, my god, ma'am, I'm honored, but..." Gardner's eyes narrowed, and he shrugged, the vid link shaking as his arm moved. "Why me? You coulda got anyone."

"Yeah, I could have." Probably should have, considering how much time this took. "And they'd probably have done fine. But I know you. I know you're good at your job."

When he didn't immediately accept that as an explanation, Shepard smiled tightly. "I prefer certainty, Gardner. It's a weakness of mine."

Gardner still seemed a bit baffled, but he nodded slowly. "Yeah. I get that."

"So you on board? Or is the _Nairobi_ more your speed?"

Now he seemed even more shocked. "'Scuse me, ma'am, but if Commander Shepard says jump, what's a man to do but jump as high as he can?"

She nodded, satisfied. "I'll expect you within the day, Gardner. Make your arrangements with your captain."

"Will do, ma'am." He saluted again, and the vidlink cut out. Shepard lowered her arm and sighed. One position down, too many to go.

* * *

Garrus stared out his window. The impossible number of ships in the galactic fleet filled the space around Earth, nearly outnumbering the stars. An Alliance dreadnought hovered nearby, its massive bulk blotting out part of South America. Shuttles darted everywhere, back and forth between the ships. Every once in a while, one would pass over or below the _Normandy_, and Garrus imagined he could hear their engines as they drew close.

He looked down at the couch below the window. He wasn't sure he'd ever owned a couch this large.

He turned around. A desk jutted out from the wall, facing the door. It had his own private terminal, a large set of shelves embedded into the wall alongside it, and three chairs, including the one behind the desk. Idly, he considered finding things to put on the shelves. His rifle parts and mods only took up a small amount of space.

He turned left, and looked at the small bedroom with a much larger bed than he was used to. Well, admittedly, Shepard's beds were the same, but they were hers, not his. He'd never had a bed larger than a single before. Garrus walked over and sat on the edge, lacing his fingers together. It was too soft. Made for a human, not a turian. But then, they wouldn't have expected a turian XO on a Systems Alliance ship.

Executive Officer. Garrus didn't really feel comfortable with the title yet. He wondered how Shepard felt each time she was promoted. Did she even care? She must. She was one of the youngest ever to make N7. But was that ambition, or just Shepard being Shepard? Pushing herself to her limits and beyond because anything else was a waste of time?

Garrus twiddled his thumbs and stared at his terminal. Despite how simple she made it sound, his stomach was in knots. He didn't like to disappoint anyone, Shepard least of all. If he was going to be her XO, he was going to be the best damn XO he could be. And for that, he needed guidance.

He stood and stomped over to his desk, sat down heavily in the chair and booted up his terminal. It was the night before the Omega 4 relay all over again. Except this time, he'd watch the damn vids.

* * *

"Shepard! The fuck's up?"

Shepard grinned. Jack had matured enough to make her sound less like a deeply troubled adolescent and more like an overeager marine. She still wasn't exactly comfortable, but she was far more at ease around Shepard than she had been back before the war.

Her head filled the screen of her terminal, image shaking as the biotic bounced up from her seat and jostled her omni-tool. She still had that ridiculous haircut - buzzed sides and long on top, pulled back into a short ponytail - and might have added another piercing to her collection.

"Back on the _Normandy,_ Jack. Or hadn't you heard?"

"No shit?" She grinned through the vidlink, big lips baring teeth, almost predatory. "Bout fuckin' time you got back to work. You headin' out to ruin someone's day already?"

"Just a shakedown cruise, Jack. Nothing big." She shrugged casually. "Not yet, anyway."

"So..." Her expression shifted as she parsed out the reason for the call. "You didn't call to bullshit, huh."

"No." Shepard let her smile fade. "We could use a biotic, Jack. If you're up for it."

Jack was no good at hiding her emotions. She seemed to panic a little. "Look, I... I'm not..." She sighed angrily, almost a snarl. "Look, Shepard, you need me to kill something for you, I'll be there with bells on, but if you can get by without me-"

"You've got people to look after." Shepard nodded. "I get it."

"Yeah." Jack didn't want to meet her eyes. "Yeah I guess."

Shepard could read enough about Jack to know when to change the subject. "How are they doing? The kids from Grissom."

Jack seemed to ease, and a smile returned to her face. "They're still running barriers for strike teams, mostly, but they're starting to cut loose. Like, really cut loose. You should see 'em, Shep, the other day, they fucked up this banshee before it even got close." She scoffed. "Course Rodriguez nearly passed out, but she didn't hit the ground. That's an improvement."

Shepard saw the look in Jack's eyes. Pride and hope and a fierce protectiveness. Reminded her of Anderson, in a strange way.

"Sounds like they still need you."

Jack chewed on her bottom lip and glanced away again. "You've... done a lot for me, Shepard. I haven't forgotten or anything. Okay?"

"Hey. Don't worry." Shepard smirked. "I still plan on cashing in all those favors someday."

Jack laughed softly, ran her hand through what little hair she had. "Well, just shout when you need a psychotic bitch, Shepard."

"You got it. Take care."

Jack nodded and cut the link. Shepard shook out her arm. Another one down. She hadn't even touched the dossiers Liara sent yet, but that had been her plan all along. Old crew first, new crew second. That weakness for certainty.

Shepard didn't trust easily, no matter how it might appear. She was willing to give the benefit of the doubt more often than not, but she was always careful. She felt she had gotten very lucky with the crews she had been a part of in the past, and she wasn't in a hurry to fix what wasn't broken. But most of them had other responsibilities now, some far greater than serving on an Alliance frigate. She could understand that, and respect it, and move on herself. But she still had to ask.

She liked being certain. She liked knowing that she could trust everyone around her implicitly. Hell, it was why she made Garrus her XO.

Shepard sighed and looked over at her desk. The private terminal had an unread message. Liara's dossiers.

She had to ask. But she would be ready when they said no.

* * *

The vidlink on Garrus' terminal flickered and the image of a pretty young dark haired human appeared.

"Can I help you?"

"Hello," he said nervously. "I'm, uh, looking for Miranda Lawson?"

"And who should I say is calling?" She looked a little suspicious. Garrus couldn't blame her, after what happened during the war - being kidnapped and held hostage by your estranged, heavily indoctrinated father would make anyone suspicious.

He smiled as gently as he could, lowering his mandibles slightly. "Tell her it's Archangel."

The younger woman left her seat, and after a handful of seconds, an older woman slid into frame. She was the spitting image of the younger, with longer hair and a much fuller figure, and that characteristic calculating expression she wore like a mask.

"Garrus," she said, her accented voice conveying a small amount of surprise. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Miranda. Sorry to bother you," he replied, leaning his elbows against the desk. "But it's important."

"Do I need to make this private?" she asked, glancing briefly away from the camera.

"No," he said quickly. "It's nothing like that. It's..." Might as well come out and say it. "Shepard made me XO. Of the _Normandy."_

Miranda's mask cracked and her eyebrows raised. "I see."

"I could use a little advice."

She blinked, pulled her own elbows up and wrapped one hand around the other, and showed a rare smug smile. "Well. Of all people, Garrus Vakarian."

He shifted a little in his seat. Miranda would have made a damn good cop - she could make anyone uncomfortable.

Miranda's smile faded and she brought her mask back up again. "What do you want to know?"

Garrus took a moment to collect his thoughts, lightly tapping his talons together. "I'm no stranger to command, Miranda. Or its responsibilities."

"I'm aware." Her hands dropped to the table her own terminal rested on. "I had a healthy respect for your skills in that area."

"I'm just a little..." He hesitated, scratching at his tattoos. "Unclear on the XO's relationship to the captain."

A smile threatened to break across Miranda's face again, but she clamped down on it quickly. "I understand. I suppose you want my honest, professional opinion."

"I wouldn't be calling otherwise."

Miranda looked away, eyes flickering as she considered her words. She brushed some hair back behind an ear. "The day-to-day running of the ship, the relationship to the rest of the crew, that will come easily for you. What won't come so easily is having to play devil's advocate."

Garrus blinked and his brow plates lowered. "Play what?"

She met his eyes again and frowned a little, more at herself than at him. "Sorry. To present a persuasive alternative, even when you agree. An XO's first duty is to make sure his or her commanding officer has all the information possible to make an informed decision. Often this involves taking a position that the commander has not."

"So I should be, what?" His mandibles fluttered gently. "Contrarian? Questioning her judgment?"

Miranda scoffed. "Of course not. It's about making sure she knows exactly what all her options are at all times. When I was XO and Shepard made a decision, that was the end of it. But until she did, I argued for the course of action I believed was best, and which I believed she had not fully considered."

Garrus nodded slowly. "Okay. I think I get it."

Miranda smiled, and for once it seemed like it made it all the way to her eyes. "You'll do fine, Garrus. The relationship between the XO and the captain can be difficult without trust. Shepard and I didn't have that for a long time, but I can't think of anyone in this galaxy she holds in closer confidence than you."

He sighed softly and bowed his head just a little. "I just hope that doesn't change."

There was a pregnant pause.

"I won't lie to you. If one of you doesn't know when to quit, it very well might."

He jerked his head up. Sympathy hovered around her eyes. "Don't give ground easily, Garrus, but give it. And if she pushes too hard, don't be afraid to pull back."

Garrus flexed his mandibles outward. "I'll remember that. Thank you, Miranda. For being honest with me."

"Of course." She glanced down at her terminal keyboard. "I'm getting another call. If there's anything else?"

"No. Well... yes." He laced his hands together in front of him. "I know we weren't exactly close, back in the Cerberus days. But I just want you to know."

He locked eyes with her. "You saved Shepard's life twice. Before the war, and after. That's worth a lot to me."

Miranda met his gaze for a moment. Then she leaned back and crossed her arms. "Technically, I only saved her life once. I brought her back from the dead the other time."

Garrus couldn't help his smile. "You never struck me as the gloating type."

"I'm not. But I think I've earned the right to be proud of my work." She nodded. "Garrus."

"Miranda."

She reached over and pressed a button, and the call cut out.

Garrus was left alone in his too-big cabin, with only his still troubled thoughts for company.

* * *

Miranda's image appeared on Shepard's terminal. She looked startled, and sounded it too. "Shepard!"

"Miranda. Have you got a minute?"

She blinked a few times and actually laughed a little. Shepard wondered what she found so amusing. "Yes, as a matter of fact I do. Is this about your crew on the _Normandy?"_

Shepard furrowed her brow. "How did you know that?"

Miranda grinned. It was surreal. "A little bird told me."

Shepard waited, but Miranda offered nothing further, so she moved on. "There's a place on board for you, if you want it."

"Which one? You've already got on XO."

Now that made her nervous. "Okay, Lawson, cut the crap, how do you know that?"

She raised a hand and looked at her nails. "I have my sources, Shepard."

Shepard frowned. "If there are still Cerberus bugs aboard my ship-"

"Not to worry, Commander. I got the information through an entirely legitimate source that is in no way a danger to you or your ship." She met her eyes again. "Trust me."

It was hard. Harder than Shepard wanted it to be. But she was crew, and she had saved Shepard's life more times than she was comfortable with.

"Okay, Miranda," she said with a sigh. "Whatever you say."

Miranda's smile became more reassuring. "I'll tell you about it next time we talk. It should be... safe enough to mention then."

Shepard rubbed her forehead. Whatever this was, Miranda was enjoying it far too much.

"So I take it you're not accepting the position of chief navigator."

She shook her head, dark hair shifting across her shoulders. "I'm afraid not. It's a bit redundant anyway, with EDI there."

"I'd like to have one anyway. Take a little of the weight off her shoulders, speed her recovery along."

"Much as I'd like to, Shepard..." She glanced away, off to the side. "I've got other priorities in my life right now."

You and everyone else, she thought. But all she said was, "Understood."

"But Shepard?" Miranda smiled, and there was no smugness or mockery in it. "For what it's worth, you made a good choice with your XO."

Shepard felt her eyebrow twitch up. She had known that, of course, but to hear it from Miranda was a surprise. "Figured you'd think of him as a 'yes man.'"

"You were so stubborn that I had trouble keeping up at times. He won't. Just don't bend him so far that he breaks." She looked away from the screen, then back again. "I should be going. Take care of yourself, Shepard."

"You too, Miranda." She cut the link and sat there staring at it for a while. That had not been exactly the conversation she had expected, but the end result had been the same.

Shepard sighed. She had made all the calls she had felt were necessary - Jack had her students to consider, Grunt was reassembling Aralakh Company, Jacob had a newborn to provide for, and Samara's duties as a justicar were too many to name. Only Zaeed had seemed interested, but once the subject of pay had come up, he said he had to think it over before he made any commitments.

That left just one call to make. For some reason Shepard had put it off, and she wasn't really sure why, which put her in a bad mood. She didn't like it when she was irrational.

Silently, Shepard keyed in the comm code for Kaidan Alenko and waited for him to pick up.


	3. Friendship and Formality

The vidlink flickered into life, and there he was.

He sat at a desk in his officer's uniform minus the jacket, revealing a thin navy blue t-shirt and strong arms. It had been a while since they'd seen each other, but he hadn't changed much. No new scars, and his dark hair was as short and well-groomed as ever. Still handsome in that classical way, all muscle and hard lines, from the line of his jaw to the bridge of his nose to the stoic angle of his brow.

But the only thing Shepard ever noticed was his eyes. Windows to the soul, people said, and for him she agreed. Even when things got personal, he always kept a sort of calm about himself like a shroud. It had been one of her guiltiest pleasures to fluster him with a smirk and a suggestive remark and watch him scramble to pick up the pieces of his shattered composure, because she never had to. All she had to do was look in his eyes and she could read him like a book.

Right now, the book's title was 'Pleasantly Surprised.'

"Shepard." He smiled, perfect white teeth. "Hey."

"Hey yourself." Already, she felt the beginnings of a smile tug at her mouth. "Glad I caught you. Figured you'd be off somewhere."

"No, I just got back. Finishing up a report," he said, lifting a datapad off his desk. "What can I do for you?"

"Putting together another crew. Shakedown, nothing serious."

Their conversations could seem curt from the outside, short phrases and single words, even back when they were together. Probably what made it so easy for Shepard to talk to him in the first place, and what made him comfortable enough to open up around her. There simply wasn't a need for so many words between them.

"Really?" He chuckled. "You must be excited."

"A little," she admitted.

"You need some recommendations?"

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "No, Kaidan, I don't."

On the other end of the line, he blinked. "Oh."

"You're massively overqualified for any position I could offer, but." She shrugged. "If you want one."

Something slipped across his eyes. Anxiety? It was gone too fast, and he covered it with humor. "You know, technically I outrank you, Commander."

She obliged him. "Not on this ship you don't, Major."

"You're right about that." Kaidan forced a brief smile. "I don't know, Shepard. Two Spectres on the same ship."

"Yeah," she agreed, a bit too quickly. "A little wasteful."

"We're supposed to be the embodiment of self-reliance, right? At least that's what they said when I was inducted."

"Got the same speech." She raised a fist. "'The right hand of the Council, instruments of their will.'"

That got a wry laugh out of him.

"I only hung up on them a couple of times," she protested mildly.

"Yeah," he said, drawing out the word. "I remember."

Shepard rested her chin in her hand and stared at him through the vidlink. There was a companionable silence that didn't last long.

"No sale, huh."

He shook his head, and she sighed.

"Not a lot of old crew on board for this one."

"It's not that they don't want to be."

"I know." Shepard stared at her fish tank. It was empty again. "I know."

Kaidan shifted in his seat. "Look, Shepard-"

_Bip bip boop,_ the door chimed.

Shepard glanced over her shoulder. "Come in."

The door opened, and Garrus walked in, a pair of datapads in one hand. "Hey, sorry to interrupt, but I put together a couple more dossiers that you-"

He looked past her and saw the screen.

"-might want to look at," he finished quickly, placing his hands behind his back and tucking his mandibles tightly against his face.

Shepard nodded, and Garrus walked up and set one of the pads on her desk, then promptly made for the door. He shouldn't be doing that, she thought. These were her quarters, and he was welcome here. If it were anyone else on the line, he would stick around to discuss the dossiers when she was finished. She felt her jaw clench in irritation. This was stupid. They were all adults.

"Garrus," she called out before the door closed. He froze, and turned on his heel to face her respectfully. "Where are you going?"

He hesitated, then stepped back inside. The doors closed behind him. but he stayed near the entrance to her quarters, still at parade rest. Shepard frowned.

"Don't just stand there, sit down."

He quickly walked past her desk, down the stairs to the small living area and plopped down on the couch.

When she finally turned her attention back to her screen, Kaidan was clearly preoccupied. His eyes flickered as he stared at nothing. He seemed to come to a decision, then leaned forward and laced his fingers together.

"Shepard, if that offer's still on the table, I'll take it."

Shepard actually felt a muscle below her eye twitch, which was new. "If this is about-"

"It is." He quickly raised a hand to halt her reprisal. "But not the way you're thinking. Shepard..." He bowed his head and sighed, raised it back up again. His eyes said he was apologizing. "I've got nothing going on. The op I just finished didn't require a Spectre's attention, and there's nothing tying me to Earth or the fleet. I'm not needed here."

"Two Spectres on the same ship," she repeated, voice free of inflection.

"Spectres have worked together before. You remember Jondum Bau. His team did good work during the war. I just..."

He raised a hand to his temple. Migraine. He still got them, side effect of those old L2 biotic implants.

"I didn't have a better excuse. But I can't keep avoiding you just because things might be uncomfortable. I once said that you meant a lot to me as a person, that I valued your friendship, and I meant it. Now you're asking for my help, and I'm running away." He scoffed at himself and shook his head. "What kind of man does that make me?"

Shepard was glad Kaidan couldn't see her hands on her knees as they flexed momentarily into tight fists. She had been just as complicit, just as guilty of what he was confessing to. She had called him as a courtesy, because he was old crew, but she had never really wanted him aboard. But why wouldn't she? He was a good soldier, talented and disciplined and noble. One of the oldest friends she had in the service. She had loved the man, for fuck's sake.

She closed her eyes and breathed. Still loved, if she was honest with herself. Not in the way that he would want, certainly not in any way that would ever hurt what she had with Garrus. But she cared. She couldn't help that, and she didn't really want to. Despite what had happened between them, he deserved that much of her.

She opened her eyes and found the image of him staring down at his desk, clasped hands in front of his mouth and shaking his head. The anger in his eyes was directed inward, which was typical of Kaidan.

"Should have made time. Shouldn't have let us get this distant." He sighed and lowered his hands. "Sorry, Shepard. I'll let you go."

He reached his hand to switch off the vidlink.

"Wait."

Kaidan waited. Shepard shook her head and chuckled humorlessly, running a hand through her hair.

"Still setting impossible standards for yourself, I see."

His hand lowered and he shrugged. He was silent, and so were his eyes.

"You know what you are?" She forced a smile onto her face. It wasn't as hard as she thought. "A man of the most stubborn integrity."

He breathed out a laugh. "I've heard it said."

Shepard hesitated one last time. Internally, she tore into herself for doing so. "I'll expect you within the next two days."

Kaidan, too, seemed to hesitate, but his eyes bespoke his relief. "I'll be there."

She nodded, then reached over and clicked off the vidlink. Shepard sat up and looked through the glass case above her desk, past the model of the quarian ship _Qwib'Qwib_. Garrus was typing away at a datapad, trying to look busy or distract himself, but she knew he had heard every word.

Shepard tried to keep her tone as neutral as possible. "This going to be a problem?"

"No," he replied too quickly. Then, after a moment, he lowered the datapad and looked up at her through the case. "Not if it isn't for you."

Shepard pushed herself up from her seat and descended the handful of stairs. She sat next to him on the couch and leaned back, closing her eyes.

"It shouldn't be."

She could feel Garrus staring at her. Then he leaned back into the cushions and she heard him keying at his datapad. "Well, Commander, if you want your Executive Officer's opinion, you need only ask."

Shepard ground her teeth, pinched the bridge of her nose for the second time that day and scowled. "Would you cut that shit out. Christ, you never pulled rank this much."

The keying stopped.

"Sorry," he said, voice less resonant as he spoke through flattened mandibles. "Being an ass."

An uncomfortable silence followed. Shepard let her hand drop to her lap and sighed angrily. "Fuck me," she cursed at herself.

Garrus waited a beat longer than he normally would. "Not sure I'm in the mood, Shepard."

Shepard let herself laugh. She reached over and patted Garrus' armored knee.

"Didn't mean to bite your head off, big guy."

"It's okay. Don't know what's wrong with me."

Shepard shrugged. "You're nervous."

"Never been nervous about a promotion before."

"I was terrified when Anderson made me his XO."

He turned, startled. "Really?"

"It happened so fast after I made N7. He was taking a big risk on me, and I just didn't want it to blow up in his face. I told him that, and you know what he said?"

She felt an ache in her chest as she remembered her captain, her mentor. Her friend.

"'I've met your mother. A Shepard in command is no risk at all.'"

A respectful silence followed as Garrus looked down at the floor. Then: "It's not really about my ability, Shepard."

Shepard looked at him until he looked back up at her. She could read Kaidan easily, but Garrus' eyes could occasionally be inscrutable to her. She wondered if he knew that.

"Nothing's changed," she insisted once again.

"And everything's changed," he said, completing a phrase. What she'd said their first night together.

"And look where that led." She smiled softly and stroked his thigh. "Same thing, Garrus. We were just expressing what was already there."

"Hmm." He blinked. "Didn't think about it like that."

"That's all it is," she said, leaning her shoulder against his. The armor dulled it, but she could still feel the faint trace of his warmth. "Formalizing an existing professional relationship."

He leaned back, and they balanced against each other. She could smell him, pennies and smoke and a hint of leather. "We still haven't formalized the personal one."

She looked up at him with half-lidded eyes. "I said yes, as I recall."

He smiled and bent his head down, his forehead pressing briefly against her own. His voice rumbled in her ears. "You did, didn't you."

She smiled and made a little contented noise in the back of her throat as he raised a hand to caress her collar bone. "We'll get around to it, Garrus. You know I'm not big on ceremony."

"I did offer a turian wedding."

"Well." Shepard raised her hand from his thigh and stroked the tip of his scarred mandible with her finger and thumb, savoring the way his eyes closed as he purred. "I'd want something a little more elaborate than saying 'I do' before a soldier of equal rank and then signing some documentation."

He opened his eyes and pulled away, feigning offense. "It's very pretty documentation."

She laughed, then climbed onto him, resting in his lap. Her hands wrapped around his collar, and his hands rested on her legs. The armor made him bulkier and her less comfortable, but she didn't care.

"The war's over, and we're not going on a suicide mission, Garrus. There's no rush."

Garrus looked dubious. "Never known you to be so patient."

She gave him the smirk he was fishing for. "Never known you to be so impatient. Not about us, anyway."

"Just want to live life while it's here, Shepard," he said with a sigh.

The mood turned more solemn. Shepard looked in his eyes and this time, she saw vulnerability. She leaned in and kissed him, but she kept her hands away from his fringe and broke away before he could raise his hands to her waist. They still had work to do today.

"You are. We are."

He breathed deeply, and she felt his chest rise and fall slowly. "Yeah."

"Now you wanna help me with those dossiers, or just sit here all day?"

He stared at her. His mandibles moved slowly, out then in.

"Garrus?"

"I'm thinking."

She bit back a laugh and flicked his nose. "Come on," she said, climbing off him, "let's take a look at Liara's first."


	4. The Gunny and the Greenhorn

There was a brief flicker as the terminals connected, and then a krogan appeared on the screen.

He wore yellow armor with orange trim, particularly bright colors for his species. His hump was larger than Grunt's, though not as large as Wrex's. His face was unscarred, but had particularly thick, flattened plating along it's wide front. It was a strong and hardy brown, with some pale orange streaks in the harder plates of his forehead. Other than the small differences, he looked much the same as many other krogan, with one exception - his bright green eyes, peering at her from under his brow.

"Lorkhan Din?"

He hummed curiously, a deep rumbling sound. "This is he."

"Commander Shepard," she said, introducing herself.

"Obviously." He settled into his chair, legs wide and hands braced against his knees. He hummed again. "This is not about clan business. You would go to our chief. Or Wrex. What do you need from me?"

He spoke calmly, simply, and his eyes never seemed to waver. He reminded her of Wrex, but a big part of his calm always seemed to come from age and experience. Din was younger by a couple centuries, and seemed more... contemplative.

"Very astute. I'm putting together a crew for my ship. I want you on it."

He blinked, squinted at her. "Why?"

Liara's dossiers were many and comprehensive, and Din was at the top of the list. Among his achievements - personal krannt to battlemaster Lorkhan Kirn and honored by Wrex for prowess during the war - he had been listed as a highly competent technician, specializing in starship weaponry and repair. At the bottom of the dossier, Liara had added a small personal note: 'let him talk, and you'll like him.'

"I've heard good things," Shepard said.

Din smiled. He didn't grin or bare his teeth. "I wonder from whom."

"A friend."

"Yours or mine?"

She didn't answer. His smile disappeared, and his big mouth twitched into a thoughtful frown as his eyes narrowed.

"Not Wrex. Too full of himself to talk about other krogan, and rightly so. Not Kirn. He is a friend, but he would know your purpose, and not want me gone. Not the other chiefs, they would have no reason to compliment me. Not Urdnot Grunt, we don't know each other." He turned his head, better to regard her with one green eye. "You have another source. A hidden source."

Shepard said nothing. She simply smiled. Din did the same.

"I haven't heard an answer, Din."

"No, you have not." He let his head roll back into place, shifted back in his seat. "What are you offering?"

"Gunnery Officer on the _Normandy_ SR-2."

He hummed thoughtfully at this. "What is the mission?"

"A shakedown cruise."

This was the part where any other krogan would have said no, too boring, come back when you're about to jump into the mouth of hell.

Din just nodded. "And after?"

"That depends on you." Shepard crossed her arms. "Maybe you'll get bored."

He smiled again. "You don't know me, Commander."

"No." She narrowed her eyes and stared into his, looking for something. She didn't know what. "I don't."

"But I know you. Every krogan does." He didn't shrink from her piercing gaze. In fact, he seemed to lean into it. "You cured the genophage. Your name means 'hero' among my people. Some say you have slain Reapers with your bare hands. To hear Wrex tell it, the void itself fears you. There is even talk that you are invincible, and that you cannot die."

"I can," she said curtly. "I just don't like to."

He blinked. Then he laughed, a short barking sound that almost startled her after his quiet, pensive voice.

"That is perhaps the most boastful thing I have ever heard."

Shepard grinned. "Coming from a krogan, that's high praise."

"Indeed." He leaned back again and shook his head. "When do you get underway?"

"Three days from now."

He nodded. "If I accept, I will be aboard before then."

She quirked a brow. "If?"

"When I commit to something, Commander Shepard, I do not do so lightly. Your offer requires... consideration." He shrugged. "Any further communication is pointless. My presence or absence will be answer enough."

Shepard smirked. "You take pride in not being like other krogan, don't you."

"There are many other krogan like me, Commander Shepard." He smiled once more, reaching for his terminal. "But they are not me."

The call ended, and Shepard laughed softly. She looked to Garrus, who was leaning against the wall containing her fish tank, just out of her terminal camera's view.

His brow plates rose. "I like him."

Shepard nodded. "Me too."

Garrus shifted a little and tilted his head. "Just hope he knows his way around a battery."

"Well, you're the XO." She spun her chair to face him fully. "It's up to you to keep the ship running smoothly. If that means teaching a krogan how to calibrate a Thanix cannon, then so be it."

He shook his head. "What a bizarre turn my life took at some point."

Shepard looked down at her nails. "Of course, there's always the possibility that he could teach you a thing or two."

"Ha!" Garrus barked, pushing away from the tank. "Who's up next?"

Shepard turned back to her terminal as Garrus stood, reading over her shoulder. "Let's see, we've got a few asari... could use a biotic. A few salarians, for a chief engineer. A few humans-"

She froze. "Garrus, look."

He leaned down, face next to hers. She felt his mandibles flex. "Don't I know that name?"

"Yeah." Shepard grinned. "I think we have our next call."

* * *

The link cleared up quickly, and a young, brown haired, strong jawed marine appeared, scratching his head. He was nowhere near the size of someone like Vega, or even Kaidan, but he was all muscle. Lithe and well built. He had eyes that seemed to naturally squint, as though he were constantly staring into a strong light, but widened to the size of dinner plates very quickly when he saw who was on the other end of the call.

She'd met him in London. He'd been assigned as her attache, and though she'd never asked him for anything if she could help it, he had managed to make an impression as a dedicated, dutiful young marine. Never a single complaint, no matter how short anyone ever got with him, and he'd never let her down. Shepard had recommended him for a promotion before she left. Now she was in a position to make that happen.

"Commander!" He almost snapped to and saluted, but realized halfway up that getting out of his chair would provide Shepard with nothing but a clear view of his crotch, and promptly sat back down. He still saluted.

"At ease, Sawyer," Shepard said, fighting back a laugh successfully. "You busy?"

He shook his head, and despite what she'd said, only seemed to straighten more. "Not for you, ma'am." His twangy drawl came through clearly.

"Then you'll forgive me for skirting around the reason for my call." She rested her chin in her hand. "Where exactly are you from? I've heard the accent before."

"North America, ma'am. Place called Kentucky." He smiled a little. "Haven't been back since before the war. Used to be beautiful country."

She hummed thoughtfully, mimicking Din's attitude. "You said you had brothers there."

"Three, ma'am. Not all in Kentucky anymore, though."

"A whole litter of Sawyer boys." Shepard smiled. "Your mother must be quite a woman, keeping you all in line."

"That she was, ma'am," he replied, and Shepard didn't miss the past tense of his words. She nodded respectfully.

"Permission to speak freely?" Sawyer asked.

"Granted."

"She was a lot like you, actually." Sawyer smiled and shrugged. "Nothin' but easy authority. She never raised a hand to any of us because she didn't have to. She spoke and everyone just fell in line."

Shepard chanced a joke. "Including your father?"

He laughed, and she was relieved she hadn't stepped into another solemn moment. "Especially the old man."

Shepard shot a pointed glance over at Garrus. He stuck out his tongue (something he picked up from Jack, no doubt) and she quickly looked away before she broke into laughter.

"What is your rank, soldier?" Shepard said, all business now. She already knew, of course, but she was enjoying this even though she knew she shouldn't.

Sawyer quickly straightened again. "Staff Sergeant, ma'am."

"How would you like that to change?"

That brought him up short real quick. "Uh."

"Simple question, Sawyer."

"Y-yes ma'am!" He set his jaw. "Whatever you say, ma'am!"

"What if I said, 'get your ass up onto the _Normandy_, Armory Chief?'"

Sawyer's eyes got big again and he fumbled for any sort of response. None came.

Shepard grinned. "I'll take that as a yes. Be aboard within two days, Sawyer. Shepard out."

She cut the link just as he regained his faculties enough to salute again.

"Spirits alive, Shepard."

"What?" She turned and smiled innocently.

Garrus gave her a stern look completely betrayed by the laughter in his eyes. "You enjoyed tormenting that poor kid."

"Oh come on, Vakarian," she said, placing her hands behind her head and spinning in her chair. "I won't give him a hard time when he's actually aboard."

"You'd better not, or he'll have a heart attack before we even get underway."

"That my XO's opinion?" Shepard asked, catching herself on her desk and smirking.

Garrus was smart enough to know not to answer that. "Who's next?"

Shepard leaned into her terminal and scanned it. "There's a few of these that jump out at me, but as usual, Liara overdid it."

"That's so unlike her," he deadpanned, making his way over to her side again. "Guess you won't need mine after all."

Shepard glanced over her shoulder. "I haven't even seen them yet. Bring 'em here."

He wandered back to the couch and by the time he got back, Shepard had narrowed down Liara's comprehensive list to a relative handful she felt would make good additions to the crew. Some of that was due to what she could figure on personal dynamics, some were due to Liara's personal recommendations, and some of it was just gut instinct based on reading through the brief personal histories Liara provided. Most weren't officer material, but she only had a few of those positions left to fill. Garrus could handle assigning crewmen. She'd notify him of that particular duty later, when he was more... relaxed.

He handed her the datapad. There were only two names.

"They good?" she asked idly, keying the pad.

"Very." He rested his hands on the back of her chair. "One of them will probably refuse, doesn't exactly play well with others these days. But the other? He'll accept, as long as you can stand him."

Shepard grinned. "I can stand you."

He bent low and whispered in her ear. "You only keep me around for my reach."

She wouldn't let him distract her too much, but she did turn and give him a blush for his trouble.

"Down, boy," she said quietly, and he reluctantly stood back up again.

Shepard sighed quietly. "Business before pleasure."


	5. Friends and Enemies

The vidlink flared, then went dark.

At least she thought it went dark, before her eyes adjusted. Then she began to pick out details – guns on the table, datapads and omni-tools and fragments of something broken. Looming further back in the dark, lit only by the screen of another terminal perpendicular to hers, sat a brown-skinned turian, fingers moving rapidly over the keys.

"Speak," he said without looking.

"Kallus Cosadus?" she asked.

He turned sharply, equal parts shock and anger evident on his face. He pulled himself closer.

"How did you get this address?" he hissed.

"A friend."

Cosadus stared, long and hard, and Shepard stared right back. She realized with some surprise that he was barefaced, his plates dulled and cracked in spots. He had small horns extending back from his temples, shorter than Saren's, but enough to be disconcertingly familiar. His gunmetal armor was streaked with red accents.

"I have a proposition for you," she said.

His mandibles clamped tightly against his face. "And what might that be, Commander?" he asked, biting her rank off like an insult.

"I'm putting together a crew. I'd like you on it."

"No."

She blinked. "No?"

He peered at her with sunken eyes. "I work alone, or at a distance. If Vakarian knew me at all, he would have told you that," he said with a scowl. "But he doesn't. And neither do you."

Well, he'd figured out her source. "No exceptions?"

He shook his head. Then he leaned forward. "You will not contact me again. And tell Garrus he needs to stop seeing white where there is only black."

Cosadus jabbed at the terminal with a finger and the vidlink promptly shut down.

Shepard leaned back and frowned, then turned to Garrus.

"Doesn't play well with others, huh."

Garrus shrugged helplessly. "Sorry. Thought he might have... mellowed, I guess."

"How did you know him?" she asked.

He crossed his arms. "He was an old CO of mine, years and years ago. One of the most dedicated soldiers I've ever known."

Considering who Garrus knew and where he had been, that was saying a lot. "What happened between the two of you?"

Garrus stiffened a little, then deflated with a sigh. "It's a long story," he said, staring at the door. "Another time."

Shepard furrowed her brow. She wasn't quite used to Garrus clamming up on her anymore. But she was more than willing to respect it.

"He's Blackwatch, isn't he?" she asked instead.

"Yeah," he admitted, meeting her eyes again. "Didn't put it in his dossier because I couldn't be certain. Blackwatch records are sealed to everyone but the Primarchs and the Councilor. I only got his address through some very official channels I probably shouldn't have access to anymore."

"He worth all that trouble?"

"I thought so. Guess I was wrong."

Shepard shrugged and gave him a reassuring smile. "No one bats a thousand, Garrus."

His mandibles loosened and twitched slightly. "I'll pretend I understood that."

She chuckled and turned back to the terminal. "This next one I won't like, huh?"

"Depends on your tolerance for bullshit."

Shepard scoffed. "Look at who I'm marrying."

Whatever clever remark Garrus had prepared died in his throat, and he coughed out a nervous laugh. Shepard grinned and glanced his way as she keyed in the next terminal address. Sadly, he still wasn't blushing, but he was practically beaming at her.

The next vidlink was much brighter, at least. But there was no one on it.

Shepard stared at an empty chair in what looked like the engineering bay of a turian ship. The main drive core pulsed regularly in the background, mass effect field glowing a steady bluish-white and casting a pale fluorescence over the active consoles. Consoles which no one was manning at the moment.

She was half-convinced that some automated protocol had accepted her call when she heard a voice.

"Just a minute!" it said, flanging appropriately turian yet rough in a way she hadn't heard before. "Just... hang on!"

There was a loud banging sound, like metal on metal, followed by a steady hiss. The console on which the terminal sat flickered and died, then rebooted itself.

"Is it on?" the voice asked.

"Uh." Shepard couldn't help but smile a little. "Yeah?"

"How about the shield redirection readouts?"

"The what?"

The voice cursed under its breath. "The... little orange light strips on the right. My right. Or your left, I guess."

Shepard leaned forward and peered intently into her screen. Garrus stifled a laugh off to her left and she shot him a brief glare.

"They're on," she said.

"Steady? Not blinking or anything?"

"Nope."

"Perfect," the voice sighed. Then a three-fingered hand appeared on the edge of the console, followed closely by a turian.

He was darker skinned as well, a sort of rust color, with bold and angular orange colony markings. He had a couple of thin scars on his plates, but they were nothing compared to his fringe, broken near the tip. Shepard knew just enough about turians to know not to stare, so she found his eyes instead. Golden amber stared out from beneath thick, heavy browplates.

"Thanks," he said, standing and brushing himself off. His armor was light brown with blue higlights, scorched and blackened near the gauntlets and splotched with grease and oil across the chest, and not nearly as heavy as Garrus'. "Caught me in the middle of something."

"I gathered."

He chuckled and settled into a seat in front of the terminal. "Well, what can I do for-"

He froze when he got his first good look at her. Then he squinted and reached up to wipe some grease off his brow.

"Commander Shepard?"

She nodded. "Sorono Sartorus?"

He nodded back, staring at her oddly. "Huh."

She blinked. "There a problem?"

"No, not really. Just..." Sorono tilted his head. "Figured you'd be scarier."

Shepard blinked again, then lowered her head slightly, clenched her jaw, and furrowed her brow.

Sorono's eyes widened. He smiled and leaned back a little. "Ohhh-kay. Yeah. Seen less intimidating thresher maws. No offense, ma'am."

"None taken," she said with a wicked smile. "You still busy?"

"Well, I got more power couplings to reroute and diagnostics to finish..." He shrugged, hands resting easy in his lap. "But I think I could take a minute to chat with the galaxy's greatest hero."

"I won't be long. Just wondering if you're happy on board the Vigilance."

His mandibles twitched and he looked somewhere above the terminal for a moment.

"'Happy' is a relative term, ma'am," he drawled. "I can't complain."

"How would you like a change of venue?" she asked.

"Depends on the venue."

"How about the Normandy?"

He tilted his head again, then leaned forward onto the console with his elbows."How about the Normandy," he repeated. "What position?"

"Chief engineer."

"Chief?" he said with some surprise. His brow plates rose and he nodded to himself. "I could like that."

"You'd be working closely with Alliance engineers, obviously. Until you got a feel for things."

"Normandy's a turian design, ain't she? Shouldn't take me that long."

"No, it shouldn't. Shall I take that as a 'yes?' "

Sorono shifted a little and turned slightly. "Why me?"

"I got a good recommendation."

"Uh-huh." He stroked his chin, tapping it with the tip of a taloned finger. "Vakarian's in the room, isn't he."

Shepard leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms, then looked pointedly at Garrus. He sighed quietly and walked over, leaning down next to her.

Sorono grinned like a maniac, hand still on his chin. "Why, hello, Vakarian."

"Sartorus."

"You're looking well."

"You aren't."

"When do I ever?"

"Are you going to accept the position or aren't you?"

He hummed thoughtfully. "What would irritate you more?"

"I think we both know the answer to that."

Sorono laughed, the strange raspy quality to his voice more pronounced than ever, and leaned back. "You and him, Shepard?" he asked.

"Yep," she said before Garrus could interrupt.

"Thought so." He grinned cheekily. "Way he kept going on about you back on Menae, figured you were either knocking boots or he was too dense to realize he had a crush."

She shrugged. "Why can't it be both?"

Sorono laughed again and clapped his hands together. "You got yourself a chief engineer, Shepard. When do you need me?"

"Within the next two days."

He gave a casual salute. "I'll burn my bridges and see you on the other side, Commander."

The vidlink closed and Garrus sighed.

"I'm going to regret this," he said.

"I don't know," she said with a smile. "I think he'll fit in just fine."

Garrus moved to stand while Shepard leaned forward and keyed the terminal back to Liara's list of dossiers.

"Bragging about me on Menae, huh?" she asked mildly.

"About my commanding officer," he clarified.

"That's all?"

"Wasn't sure where we stood."

She turned and looked him dead in the eye.

"I was," she said.

Garrus paused, his mandibles fluttering. Then he huffed and averted his eyes, scratching at his tattoos. "Always so certain."

Shepard smiled and turned back to the terminal. "Just one left."

"Science officer, right?" he asked as he wandered back outside of her terminal camera's sight. "You have one in mind?"

"One of Liara's did stick out." She rechecked the name. "Korbin Vorek."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Garrus said, leaning against the fish tank again, "but that sounds-"

"Batarian." Shepard keyed in the address and took a breath. "Yeah."

While she waited for the call to connect, Shepard made a mental note to thank Liara again; if she hadn't attached Korbin Vorek's personal terminal address to the dossier she'd sent, Shepard would have had to go through at least three distinct Alliance channels and receive clearance from an intelligence official before she would have been able to even speak with the batarian scientist, and given the circumstances surrounding his defection, that would probably be a conservative estimate.

As it was, she had him on her screen inside of thirty seconds.

The room behind him looked like prefab quarters, dimly lit and filled with scientific equipment and instruments she couldn't even begin to identify, and at least five other large holo-projected screens filled with images she couldn't make out through the link.

Vorek himself looked exhausted. His two larger black eyes were open, but the smaller set above them were half-closed. His skin was pale green and splotchy, almost sickly. He yawned as he sat down in front of the terminal, flaring his six nostrils and baring his numerous needle-like teeth.

There was a long, silent moment before he realized who she was. Then he seemed to snap awake all at once.

"Wh-... Yo-"

"Korbin Vorek?" she asked, keeping her expression neutral.

The batarian's long throat bobbed noticeably. "Yes," he said, deep tenor voice cracking slightly.

"Do you have a moment?"

He took a breath and nodded slowly, four eyes glancing from side to side as though he expected someone to burst in at any moment. "What is this about, Commander?"

Shepard didn't want to drag this out, but she had to be certain of a few things.

"You were on the team of scientists assigned to the Leviathan of Dis," she said, leaning forward and resting her weight on her elbows.

He nodded again, and when he spoke, it was in a stronger voice. "One of many. I had little contact with the Leviathan itself. I worked on samples and data brought back by field teams."

"How many years?" she asked. Liara's dossier had been comprehensive, of course. She simply wanted to hear what he'd say.

"Five," he said.

The truth caught her a little off guard. She didn't show it. "And before that?"

Vorek fidgeted a little, hands flexing on either side of the terminal. "Ablative armor research program, for two years."

"And before that?"

His eyes drifted off to the side. "Submission net redesign program for four years."

A muscle in Shepard's jaw jumped. "All state programs," she continued.

"Every program is a state program," Vorek said simply. "You work for the Hegemony, or you don't work at all."

"And you worked for the Hegemony."

Vorek blinked, all four eyes. "Yes."

They stared at each other through the vidlink. Vorek kept his gaze level, glancing away only occasionally. Shepard stared into each of his four eyes in turn, trying to figure out... something.

She leaned back and crossed her legs. "You're the-"

A door in the rear of the room opened with a hiss. A figure stood framed by brighter light from the hallway. Even through the link, Shepard could recognize a batarian silhouette. A memory from the Blitz surfaced unbidden in her mind, and she forcefully shoved it aside.

Vorek spun quickly. "Not now, Mala!" he barked.

The figure quickly backed away and the door closed. Vorek faced the terminal again, looking troubled.

"Your wife?" she asked quietly.

Vorek took a shaking breath. "Commander, I don't know what this is about, but if... if you would be so kind as to enlighten me..."

Shepard leaned forward onto her elbows again. She needed to get this over with before Vorek had a stroke.

"You're the foremost living expert on Reaper technology. True?"

He blinked rapidly. "I... suppose an argument could be made."

"And you are suffering from no ill effects as a result of your work?"

Now he frowned, the first emotion other than fear or discomfort that he'd displayed so far. "If you are asking whether or not I am, or was, indoctrinated, the answer is no."

Shepard laced her fingers together. "And how do you feel about me?"

Vorek faltered. His mouth moved but no words came out. He looked down at his terminal keyboard and said nothing.

"I need a chief science officer, Vorek."

His head jerked up and his eyes widened.

"If you don't want the position, I understand. I can find someone else." Shepard waited a beat, considered her other options, and went for the truth. "But they're not what I need. So I'm asking you first."

She'd seen angry batarians before, even frightened ones, but she'd never seen one quite as stunned as Korbin Vorek was. It took him a few seconds to regain his faculties.

"Are you... certain?" he asked weakly.

"I wouldn't be asking if I wasn't."

"And..." he swallowed again. "What would happen if I said no?"

Shepard furrowed her brow, confused. "What do you think would happen?"

An uncomfortable silence hung between them before Vorek sighed and rubbed at his left eyes. "I'm sorry, I... the Alliance is not like the Hegemony. It's... taking some getting used to."

Her expression softened. "I understand. The Normandy leaves in three days. If you need the night to think about it..."

He nodded. "I will discuss the matter with my family," he said wearily. "I will send you a message in advance of my arrival, should I accept."

"Noted." She inclined her head. "Vorek."

He lowered his hand and nodded, and waited for her to close the connection. When she did, she blew out a sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose.

Garrus waited a solid minute before he spoke. "Are you going to be okay with this?"

Shepard dropped her hand and frowned. "What reason would I have not to be?"

It was a stupid thing to say. She knew that even as she was saying it, and Garrus' mandibles dipped into a small frown to let her know that he knew it too.

He held up a hand and counted off fingers. "The Blitz. Terra Nova. Half of the Blue Suns."

She looked away and back at her blank terminal screen.

"Aratoht."

Shepard flinched. She'd never spoken with anyone about Aratoht, not even Garrus. Much as he wanted to share her burdens, that was one she'd carry to her grave.

She did her best not to think about it, most days. Same way she tried not to think about the Skyllian Blitz. Or Balak and Terra Nova. Or the dozens of batarian slavers she'd gunned down in her career, and the aftermath they always left behind.

Now she'd have a walking, talking reminder of all of the above stationed on her ship.

"I'll deal with it," she said harshly.

She heard him take the two long strides across the room to her side, felt the feather-light presence of his palm between her shoulder blades, but she wouldn't look him in the eye.

And not for the first time, Shepard was thankful that Garrus knew when to say nothing.


	6. Proper Priorities

Her omni-tool pinged loudly, startling both of them.

She pulled it up and checked the message. Her alarm.

"Shift change," she said with a huff. "Christ, is it that late already?"

"Don't humans have a saying?" Garrus said as she stood and stretched her arms above her head. "Something about time flying?"

"When you're having fun." She walked past him to her unoccupied fish tank. "Not sure I'd classify this as 'fun.' "

"Well, maybe not," he said, stepping up close behind her, "but we both know there's no place in the galaxy you'd rather be."

Shepard took a breath, studying their reflections in the glass of the tank. She smiled without meaning to. "True. Lot of good memories in this ship."

"In this room, in particular," he rumbled, mandibles fluttering over her shoulder.

"Oh really?" she said wryly, turning to face him.

He was inches away, his armor and the few inches of height he had on her gave him a looming presence when he was this close. His plates and eyes caught the blue light from the fish tank, accentuating his alien appearance.

A few years ago, she wouldn't have found him attractive in the slightest. She knew why that had changed, but she still wondered at the how.

He grinned at her with half-lidded eyes and brought a hand up to brush against her bicep. "We could... recreate some of the nicer ones, if you want."

She almost laughed out loud. Maybe that answered her question. Garrus had a swagger that sometimes sent him stumbling, but when he made it work...

Shepard turned away from him and walked to the door of her quarters, deliberately swinging her hips.

"I'm not the kind of person who lives in the past, Garrus," she said. "And I'm still getting used to the idea of a future. Right now, I'm concentrating on the present."

She keyed open the door. "And in the present, you have your own cabin."

Shepard turned and found him looking confused and a bit hurt. Shit. Not her intention at all. Good God, how did they even end up together when she was so awful at this?

She flashed what she hoped was a sultry smirk, slowly backed through her open door, and said the first thing that came to mind.

"And a new bed that needs christening."

Smooth, Shepard.

He blinked twice. His eyes widened and his mandibles flared. Again, she had to stifle the impulse to laugh as he swaggered slowly after her into the elevator.

* * *

They froze. The galaxy seemed to shrink and for a handful of moments, there was nothing but him beneath her, the bed beneath them both, and a primal feeling of satisfaction burning through every nerve in her body.

Too quickly, it faded, and in its wake came that strange post-coital hypersensitivity. She picked out the more potent sensations: his three fingered hands gently kneading her back. Hot breath against her chest. The back of his head and the nape of his neck beneath her fingers, soft like fine leather between the plates along his spine. The mild burning on the inside of her thighs that said they'd gone too long and too hard in a position that left her vulnerable to the relative roughness of his skin.

Garrus made a thoroughly contented noise, his chest vibrating against her stomach. She shuddered reflexively.

"Do that again," she said.

Shepard felt his mandibles flutter against her breasts and even without seeing him, she knew he had that smug, self-satisfied expression on his face. He took a deep breath and hummed again, long and low. She let her eyes drift closed as she absorbed the heat of his breath and the thrum of his chest, and she breathed out a quiet, shaky laugh.

"Think I've found my new favorite thing."

He lifted his head and looked up at her, blue eyes half-lidded. "Really?"

Garrus shifted and rolled until she was beneath him. He breathed in and his voice modulated up and down his vocal and subvocal spectrum as he pressed his chest against her. It was too much - she could already feel a heat beginning to build.

"Stop," she sighed, even as she thought _don't you dare._ "Need to sleep. Work to do."

"We're still in orbit," he said before humming as he nuzzled her left breast. "Two more nights before we set off. We've got time."

"Thought we were – oh god do the low one again, the low one." She groaned when he did, the deep, resonant thrum like distant thunder. Shepard struggled to finish her thought. "We were done being indulgent."

"We are." His hands found her shoulders, pressing her down into the bed. "Now we're just enjoying ourselves -" He hummed. "- after a long day -" Hummed again. "- of doing our duty."

Her breaths were growing quicker. She had lost the urge to fight him on this, but if it were to continue, she wanted to enjoy it properly.

"Stop." She said it with conviction this time, and he did, immediately removing his hands and lifting himself off her. Shepard silenced whatever concern he had with a tired, crooked smile.

"Oil," she said, running her fingers along his pectoral plates. "Not all of you is as soft as your middle, big guy."

"Right." He bent down and kissed her stomach. His hand gently rubbed the outside of her thigh. "Get some lotion too."

"You didn't apologize this time," she noted as he climbed out of the bed. "Good."

"It's implied," he said as he walked to his desk. "You know that."

Shepard ogled his back as he moved. Alien or not, she'd always liked broad shoulders. "It's still unnecessary."

Garrus opened the top-right drawer. "Can't help how I feel, Shepard."

"Neither can I," she said with a smirk. "That's how this got started in the first place."

Garrus looked like he was about to say something particularly droll, when his mandibles flared. He closed the drawer and looked in the lower one. Then the one below that.

"Uh oh."

Shepard blinked. "What?"

"You're not going to believe this."

Now this was a surprise. "No."

Garrus slowly closed the drawer, shut his eyes and ran a hand over his face. "I knew I forgot something."

She racked her brain, eyes flickering back and forth. It had been months since she'd been aboard her ship. Where did she keep the spares? "My cabin. In the nightstand."

He was already moving, slipping into his new set of civvies. Faster than getting his armor back on, especially with it strewn over his cabin like it was. "Your side or mine?" he asked.

Shepard's stomach did a brief, jubilant somersault at the three simultaneous revelations that he had claimed one side of her bed as his own, that she knew exactly which side he was referring to, and that she didn't mind in the least.

Garrus finished buckling his pants and quirked a browplate when he saw her grinning at him like an idiot.

"Mine."

* * *

Garrus stepped out of Shepard's cabin with a bottle of oil in one hand, a tube of lotion in the other, and a spring in his step. He all but bounded into the elevator, keying the control panel for the crew deck.

They'd had a long time planetside to get to know each other physically. Their interminable medical leave lasted long after they were both healed, and they had spent many nights together. He had thought, perhaps a bit ruefully, that being back on the ship would change things. That she wouldn't want or need his company nearly as much as she did when she was bored out of her mind back in London.

He was delighted to be proven wrong.

The elevator slowed as it reached the crew deck. The doors opened, and Garrus nearly collided with a crewman stepping in.

"Oh, sir!" The young man straightened. He had a datapad in his hand. "I was just going to look for you."

Garrus quickly shifted his hands behind his back and struggled to switch his train of thought. Who was this? Copeland. The yeoman. Right.

"Can't this wait until tomorrow, Copeland?" he said, glancing over his shoulder at the path that would take him to his cabin.

"I'm sorry, sir," Copeland said, looking like a kicked varren. "I should have double checked the inventory earlier... we're short a few things that I need clearance from a superior officer to requisition. And I need to know what the basic crew makeup is going to be like so I know what food and medical supplies are required. If I don't get those orders in tonight, they won't be delivered before we set off."

Garrus' mandibles shifted against his face and Copeland seemed to take this poorly. "It's my fault, sir," he said, straightening to attention. "I should have come to you earlier."

That was crap. Garrus was the XO. These were his responsibilities. He should have checked the inventory himself and sent down a rough crew roster to the yeoman before he left Shepard's cabin. Instead, he'd let himself get distracted.

Garrus shook his head and sighed, a little wistfully. "It's not your fault, Copeland," he said. "We'll take care of it."

He shifted and extended an empty hand. Copeland gave him the datapad. He skimmed it as he stepped back into the elevator, making sure to keep the hand containing the oil and lotion out of the yeoman's sight at all times. Once they were in the cargo bay, he'd stash them somewhere until he was finished. With any luck, this wouldn't take too long.

"Alright, let's start from the top..."

* * *

It was a good thing the yeoman had come to him – while Garrus was down in the cargo bay, he'd run into Cortez, cursing and sputtering, elbow deep in the Kodiak's engine. The shuttle was on its last legs, according to her pilot. Bringing Shepard and Garrus up from London was apparently the last trip she'd ever make. After all it had been through, Garrus thought it was a wonder it had lasted this long.

So that had turned into another requisition order Garrus had to sign off on, with a little help from Cortez in detailing the vast number of technical issues it had to justify the request. Then the lieutenant added a few things to the yeoman's equipment list that he insisted were to help 'keep his new baby bird in the air.'

And now, an hour later, Garrus was back in his cabin, lotion and oil in hand, successfully hidden from all prying eyes. Not that either were needed anymore.

Shepard was dozing in the bed, powder blue sheets pulled to her neck, face half-buried in a pillow. Her red hair was tousled and everywhere, and she was snoring softly.

Garrus walked quietly over and sat as softly as he could on the edge of the bed. Part of him didn't want to wake her. Even these days, she didn't sleep as well as she should. But he gently brushed some of her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear, and she opened her eyes.

"Trouble?" she asked blearily, rolling onto her back.

"Duty," he said, sighing and rolling his shoulders. "Forgot to do something for Copeland, came back to bite me. Had to deal with it. And then Cortez and the shuttle..."

He trailed off. Shepard blinked slowly.

"Forget it," he said, stowing the oil in the single drawer of this tiny nightstand. "It's all taken care of."

"So..." Shepard propped herself up on her elbows. "You chose reports and logistical minutiae over me?"

"Uh." Was this one of those trick questions? No, Shepard didn't ask trick questions. "Yes?"

She blinked again. Then she smiled and laid back down.

"Good," she said, closing her eyes. "Knew I picked a good XO."

Garrus felt a sudden warmth pool in his stomach.

"Flatterer," he said, pulling back the covers.

She chuckled quietly. When she heard him squeeze the lotion onto his hand, she opened her eyes again.

"It's okay," she said. "I'm fine."

"What you always say," he replied, rubbing the lotion onto the center of her chest. "Said that after Omega 4, too."

"Because I was fine."

"You had three cracked ribs, a bruised pelvis, plasma burns, plus three entry and two exit wounds. You were covered in cuts and bruises and held together by nothing but medigel and prayer."

There was a brief pause as Garrus kneaded the lotion into the reddened areas of her stomach.

"Well," she said finally, "I _felt_ fine."

Garrus scoffed. "Right."

"And you're one to talk anyway," she said mildly. "You took a shot straight to the chest. Scared the living shit out of me."

"Didn't even pierce the armor," he said with confidence.

"And that time you took a bite out of a rocket after days without sleep, spent hours in surgery, and then jumped up and said you were fit for duty?"

Now it was his turn to pause. His hand stilled on the inside of her thigh. He sighed wearily and stared at the bed.

"I want to do this, Shepard," he said. "I don't want to argue about it. I just..."

She sat up. Her hand gently tugged his mandible, turning him towards her. Shepard pressed her forehead against his.

"It's the wanting to that matters, Garrus," she said softly.

He shook his head against hers. "Not how turians work, Shepard."

"Thought you were a bad turian."

"Not that bad."

"No," she agreed, pressing her lips against his mouth. "Not that bad at all."

She pulled him down with her as she lay back. The tube of lotion fell from the edge of the bed, forgotten.

He'd let her win, just this once.


	7. Past Histories

Garrus slept in the next morning. Turians didn't need more than five hours of rest, and could function with as little as three, but he'd gone a full seven. In a human bed, no less.

Maybe that medical leave had affected him more than he'd thought.

Regardless, he was up before shift change, and for once at the same time as Shepard. They shared his tiny shower, but sadly, only out of necessity. Unlike the commander's cabin, Garrus' shower operated under the same rules as the communal showers – five minutes of hot running water before the cutoff engaged.

When they left his cabin together, there were already a few crewmen up and about, lining up for the bathrooms, chewing on ration bars in the mess hall, or drinking bad coffee in the open-air galley. He and Shepard ate a quick and unsatisfying breakfast together while she assured everyone around them that the _Normandy_'s old mess sergeant would be making his triumphant return later that day, and then they parted ways.

Garrus had to fight the instinct not to march straight for the battery and start calibrating the guns. Part of him was going to miss it, obviously. He'd always been a tinkerer, and enjoyed the technical challenge, but he had other responsibilities now. He was getting too complacent in there, anyway.

So he spent most of the day making the rounds, coordinating with Copeland and Cortez on requisitions, and personally checking in with each crewman. He'd always preferred a more familiar method of command, even before he met Shepard, and his time aboard the ship on three separate tours had let him get to know almost everyone who'd served on the_ Normandy_ at one time or another.

Which dovetailed nicely into the other duty that Shepard had so kindly informed him of before they'd drifted off to sleep last night – assigning crewmen.

As usual, he'd followed Shepard's example – he started with the names and faces he remembered from his first two tours. SR-1 crew was easy. Some had died during the war, or retired, and a few were missing or AWOL. But most of them were still with the Alliance, spread out over Earth or the fleet, and easy enough to track down.

The SR-2 crew was far more difficult. They'd been Cerberus, and most of them hadn't elected to return to Earth with their commander when she turned herself in. In a post-war galaxy that had not yet recovered, they were almost impossible to find, and the handful he did were outside the system. With the relays still non-functional, they couldn't come even if they wanted to.

Which left a number of positions open.

He kept thinking about Omega, about how his poor judgment of character had gotten good men, good friends, killed. If that happened again... it didn't bear thinking about. He swore to himself once that Omega would never get the better of him again. So he read through psych evals, checked and rechecked service records, and picked the best men and women he could find.

Shepard had placed her trust in him, and he would not let her down.

* * *

Shepard spent her day running up and down the ship as the hours sped by. Checking and rechecking that everything was where it should be, and everyone was getting what they needed to do their job. Part of her felt like she was stepping on Garrus' toes, but Anderson had once told her that a good captain was always moving, and a great XO followed close behind, broom and dustpan in hand.

Meeting and greeting the new arrivals took precedence over anything else. Sawyer arrived first, early in the morning on the first day in marine BDUs so crisp he must have pressed and starched them the night before. He was a little overeager, but Shepard could tell he'd ease up a little once he settled in.

Garrus had been sure to be present for the next - Sorono had practically sauntered out the airlock, escorted by a single turian marine as was customary during transfers. His armor was cleaner than Shepard last saw it, but worn and scuffed, especially around the knees and gauntlets.

He was deferential, but not simpering. Polite, but not big on protocol. And when he'd asked if he could smoke, she'd almost laughed. "As long as it doesn't affect the ship or your duties," she said, to which he replied, "If it did, ma'am, I wouldn't have asked."

The only awkward moment was when the turian marine had said something under his breath that made Garrus bark out a reprimand and all but threaten to have him court-martialed. He'd hurried back into the shuttle as soon as he was dismissed. She said nothing at the time, but she made a mental note to ask Garrus about it later.

The day wore on. Shepard was in the middle of chewing Vega out for taking his sweet time clearing his old workstation when Joker's voice came through the intercom.

"Commander, we got another shuttle incoming. ETA five minutes."

"From?"

"Transponder codes, identifying markings, and general comm traffic indicate it is from London, Commander," EDI chimed in.

Joker's sneer could be heard through his voice. "Uh, yeah, what she said."

Shepard shook her head. "Vega, when you're finished, give Sawyer the lay of the land."

Vega nodded sheepishly. He looked thoroughly chastised. "Sure thing, Lola."

She nodded at Sawyer, who saluted once again, then turned for the elevator. Before the doors closed she heard Sawyer saying, "I didn't know her name was Lola."

* * *

Shepard crossed her arms as the long decontamination process came to close. The airlock door opened, and out stepped their latest arrival. She smiled a bit tightly.

"Welcome aboard, Major."

Kaidan was wearing his full officer's uniform, crisp and neat, with a nearly identical duffel to Sawyer's hanging off one shoulder. He smiled as tightly and stepped forward, just out of arm's reach.

"Good to see you again, Commander," he said. "It's... kinda been a while."

"Kinda has," she agreed.

They stood there for a handful of seconds. Shepard started to extend a hand, but hesitated as Kaidan almost saluted.

She clenched her jaw. Fuck this hesitant, half-real bullshit, she thought. She marched forward and hugged him. Kaidan didn't know how to react at first, but eventually returned the embrace with one arm, the other resting on the side of his duffel.

"It's good to see you too, Kaidan," she said as honestly as she could, clapping him on the back before she pulled away.

His eyes seemed troubled, but when he smiled, they smiled too. He didn't let his gaze linger on her too long, though, glancing around the still undermanned CIC. "Glad to see things haven't changed too much."

"Ship's definitely due for a full refit one of these days," she said, glad to have something to say, "but it'll do for now."

"It looks better than it did when we left Earth." He paused. "Cleaner."

"Well, the ground techs weren't rudely interrupted this time."

He chuckled. "True enough."

A lull in the conversation threatened to build into an awkward silence.

"So..." Kaidan shifted his weight and the strap of the bag on his shoulder. "I'm a little confused as to what my position is, exactly."

"I was thinking Chief Technical Officer."

His eyebrows rose. "Thought EDI handled all that now," he said, glancing off towards the cockpit where Joker was doing his best to look busy.

"She does, for the most part. But she's not at her best." Shepard didn't bother hiding her grimace. "Having someone else handle the software end of things would take some of the burden off her."

He hummed an acknowledgment. "So, cyberwarfare suites? Internal diagnostic programs? That sort of thing?"

She smiled. "Figured it's been a while since you've gotten to play with high-end software."

"Not since the SR-1," he said with a sigh. "And that workstation across from the medbay."

Shepard tilted her head. "What were you always doing down there, anyway?"

Kaidan smirked, and it looked odd on his face. "I tried to explain it to you once."

"No you didn't."

"I did. You made snoring sounds to make me shut up."

She blinked. "I did, didn't I."

"You did."

"Well, now I feel bad."

"Don't." Kaidan put on his most dour expression. "It was very funny."

Shepard actually laughed out loud. Kaidan smiled. For a second, it was like nothing had ever happened. But it didn't last. She brushed some stray hair back behind her ear while Kaidan shifted the strap of his duffel on his shoulder.

"Come on," Shepard said with a jerk of her head. "I'll show you to your quarters."

Kaidan blinked. "I know my way around, Shepard."

She froze, half-turned towards the elevator, and chuckled nervously. "Yeah, I guess you do."

"I'll just drop this off, then take a look at my station. The war room, right?"

"Yeah," she said with a nod.

"Then I'll get to work," he said as he walked past her. "Hope EDI's accommodating."

"I will endeavor to be very accommodating, Major Alenko," EDI said through the intercom.

"Don't listen to her!" Joker shouted, spinning in his chair. "She'll argue about every little thing!"

Kaidan laughed as he made his way to the elevator. Shepard turned and peered at him. Joker suddenly became very interested in his console.

* * *

The elevator doors opened, and Garrus blinked. Then he stepped in, Kaidan moving to the side to give him room. He pressed the key for the engineering deck and laced his hands together.

"Garrus."

"Kaidan."

Garrus stared up at the deck indicator. It didn't move, even as the elevator began to descend.

"Didn't know you were aboard," he said.

"Just got here."

"Ah."

Silence. Kaidan shifted his feet.

"You're the XO?" he asked.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Nothing," he said. "She picked a good one, that's all."

Garrus glanced in Kaidan's general direction. He was staring at the doors and drumming his fingers on the strap of his duffel.

"Still this slow?" he muttered.

Garrus huffed. "Wouldn't be the _Normandy_ otherwise."

"I guess."

The damned number finally blinked over, and the elevator began to decelerate. Garrus tapped his two-toed foot.

"You, uh." Garrus hesitated, and mentally kicked himself for it. "You need anything, you let me know."

Kaidan nodded quickly. "Sure."

The doors opened and Garrus walked out as quickly as he could.

He hated awkward. And he hated elevators. And a little bit of him didn't much care for Alenko, either, but he tried not to dwell on that for very long.

Thankfully, the XO always had something to occupy themselves with.

"Sorono!" Garrus called, rounding the corner into engineering proper. Daniels and Donnelly were up near the Tantalus drive core, engaged in animated conversation over one of the terminals. Adams was at his usual station in the rear.

"Adams, have you seen Sorono?" Garrus asked.

"Down below," he said, frowning down at his terminal. "Working on the auxiliary thrusters."

"The auxiliaries?"

"Told him it wasn't necessary," Adams said with a sigh, flicking a finger across his screen to examine another readout, "but he didn't seem to care."

Garrus turned and headed down the stairs, into the belly of the ship's engineering section. Walls and ceiling covered with pipes, panels, and conduits, without a terminal in sight. Very analog. Which figured, for Sorono.

But he wasn't here. It was empty.

"Sor?" Garrus called, stepping forward into the old space that Shepard used to call 'Jack's hidey hole.'

Without warning, a spanner fell from the ceiling, clanging loudly against the deck plates.

"Ah, shit," came a voice from above. "You mind?"

Garrus stepped forward and looked up. Wedged in a small maintenance crawlspace, upside down, was Sorono, his armor already covered in grease and muck. What and how, Garrus would never know.

"Settling in alright?" he asked, picking up the spanner as Sorono managed to shimmy partway down and stick his head out.

"Already settled," Sorono said with a grunt as he shifted. "Just getting the lay of the land."

"Right." He tilted his head. "Making friends?"

"Sure. Daniels and Donnelly are alright. Bright kids, passionate. Adams has got a stick up his ass larger than yours, though."

He reached down for the spanner but Garrus quickly withdrew it with a frown.

"Adams is a good officer."

Sorono rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah."

"He's got seniority. You should listen to him."

"Am I the chief or aren't I?" he asked indignantly.

Garrus twisted his mandibles into a sneer. "If you are, I'd say you have better things to be doing than this."

Sorono narrowed his eyes, then began to crawl his way out. He came out headfirst, grabbed onto a pipe, and swung his legs, landing with a grunt.

"The hell are you doing down here, anyway?" he asked, pulling something off the belt of his armor as he straightened.

"Was about to ask you the same thing," Garrus replied, finally handing him the spanner. "The auxiliary thrusters?"

"Like I said, I was getting a lay of the land." He slapped the spanner onto the back of his hardsuit, the magnetic holster catching it, then popped open the tube he'd pulled from his belt and plucked out a cigarette. "I like to know what I'm working with."

"You could get readouts in any terminal in engineering."

Sorono shook his head, omni-tool flaring briefly as he lit up and took a drag. "Not the same."

Garrus crossed his arms. Sor stared at him.

"Now what did you want?" he asked.

"Just checking to make sure you're acclimatizing."

"Aw." Sorono flared one mandible. "That's sweet."

Now it was Garrus' turn to roll his eyes. "Spirits, why did I ever think this was a good idea."

"Because your girl deserves the best," Sorono said, sauntering over to pick up a toolkit. "And I'm the best damn engineer you know."

Garrus wasn't sure whether he meant Shepard or the_ Normandy_. Not that it mattered. "Not even remotely," he said.

Sor shrugged. "Second best, then."

Garrus said nothing.

"Third."

He looked down and scratched idly at a spot on his armor.

"Oh come on, fourth?"

Garrus made a thoughtful noise. "Debatable."

"Yeah, fuck you too, Vakarian," Sorono said, pulling the spanner off his back and placing it in the toolkit. "Just for that, I'm going to go upstairs and do actual work."

"Try not to strain yourself," he said, turning to leave. His omni-tool pinged, and he booted it up.

"Garrus?" Shepard's voice, clear through the speaker. "Where are you?"

"Engineering. Why?"

"Well, get up to the crew deck," she said mildly. "I need your help with something."

"On my way," he said, closing the connection.

"Booty call," Sorono said.

Garrus turned, his browplates lowered. "What?"

Slowly, Sorono's face flared into that shit-eating grin that made Garrus want to break his mandibles off.

"You deal with humans every day and still haven't learned to speak the language," he drawled. "It's like C-Sec all over again."


	8. Curiosity

Shepard had enlisted Garrus to help Gardner with the instructions to a particularly esoteric turian recipe he'd found on the extranet. He wasn't a cook, but he knew the basic time measurements and what a 'dramus' was, which was all Gardner needed.

Once that last tiny crisis was averted, she was finally able to relax.

The large mess hall table wasn't quite filled yet, and none of the other, smaller tables were even occupied. But with Joker at one end, regaling Sawyer and the new crew with tall tales of her exploits, Kaidan correcting most of his exaggerations, Sorono rumbling laughter across from Garrus, Vega and Cortez bullshitting as usual, and Gardner whistling a tune as he tended to his pots...

Shepard basked in it. She'd missed this more than anything.

"Alright," Joker said, making a frame with his fingers. "Picture this: Rannoch, the quarian homeworld. A land of nothing but rock and water, stripped clean of -"

Vega nudged Sawyer with his elbow and flashed him a grin. "I was there for this one."

"Shh!" EDI hushed. It reminded Shepard of static.

The big man rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. Across the table, Cortez snickered.

"And in that barren, desolate place... was a Reaper dreadnought!" Joker stood suddenly, throwing one hand high and making a circle around his eye with the other. "Thirty stories high and breathing lasers from its eye!"

"Eyes don't breath, Joker," Kaidan corrected mildly.

"God, you are ruining the imagery!" Joker sighed petulantly, and when all was quiet again, he continued in hushed tones."The colossal techno-organic devil was bearing down on the Commander. Alone on a rocky plateau, with nothing but a laser pointer and her wits, she stared it down." His voice gradually rose as he spoke. "It drew closer, and closer, looming above her, and then-!"

"And then I beat it to death with my bare hands," Shepard said through a mouthful of steak. "It was awesome."

That got a laugh out of everyone. Joker stood there, arms now hanging at his sides.

"You know what? Fine." He plopped back into his chair and crossed his arms. "My talents are wasted on you people."

EDI laid a hand on his shoulder. "I thought it was very evocative, Jeff," she said soothingly.

Garrus nearly choked on his... whatever it was he was eating. Something fried. Shepard clapped him on the back as he coughed.

"Everyone's tired of hearing about Commander Shepard, Joker," she said. "Especially me. Let someone else take the floor for once."

Vega leaned forward. "Alright, so I'm alone in this cave, right?

Cortez groaned. "Oh, here we go."

"In an asteroid, separated from my squad, low on air, with fifty batarian raiders between me and the shuttle."

"Pull the other one, Jimmy," Garrus said hoarsely as he recovered from his near-death experience. "It's got bells on."

"James," Shepard said with a smile and a reproachful tone, "let someone else have a chance. Sawyer?"

The new armory chief's head jerked up, eyes as wide as his dinner plate. "Nah," he said, scratching at his jaw, "I haven't done anything special."

"Aw, come on, New Meat." Joker leaned forward, past Vega's bulk, and pointed at him. "Proudest moment. Go."

"Well..." Sawyer shifted back in his seat and laid his hands on either side of his plate. "Proudest moment, huh?"

Everyone waited expectantly. Joker sipped loudly at his drink. Sawyer ran a hand through his close-cropped brown hair, looking sheepish.

"Alright. I was stationed on Shanxi before the war started, for about a year or so. Not the most exciting post in the galaxy, but, y'know, figured every soldier's got his job to do, and sometimes that job is standing around and acting like you're doing something important."

A knowing murmur of assent from everyone. Joker and Cortez chuckled.

"So... there was this girl." He shrugged. "Couldn't have been more than twelve. Dirty blonde hair, clothes too big for her, just kinda unkempt, you know. Figured her for an orphan. Snuck into the base and ran around selling bootleg vids and cigarettes to the soldiers. And, y'know, I figure a small girl around a bunch of macho, aggressive, oversexed twenty-somethings is gonna be trouble, right?

"But the whole base loved that little girl. She had free run of the place, could go anywhere she wanted, and anyone said anything or did anything she didn't like, there'd be a dozen marines at her side in two seconds flat. She was like... I don't know, our mascot or something."

Sawyer smiled and scratched at a tiny scar near his eye. "Cheryl, her name was. Sneaky Cheryl, 'cause no one ever figured out how she kept getting in. Not that anyone ever really looked.

"Anyway." He sighed. "When the war started, Earth was hit first. Shanxi barely had time to react. And we get the order from Admiral Hackett to evacuate as many people as we can as fast as we can, and hoof it to the Citadel." Sawyer shook his head. "Not a lot of people happy about that, but when the admiral says jump."

Nods across the table. No one interrupted.

"We were right next to the capital city. Half the battalion is down there, trying to get everyone into shuttles without trampling all over each other, fly 'em up to the cruisers we got in orbit." He grinned and chuckled a little. "And the rest of us are turning the whole base inside out looking for Cheryl. Just runnin' around, checkin' all her usual spots, shouting 'Cheryl, come on girl, we got to go!' No one could imagine just leaving her behind.

"I was the one who found her, couple miles down the road from the barracks. She had this real old phone, practically screamin' into it. I ran up and told her we had to go, but she wouldn't. Said she had to find her dad, and he wasn't answering his phone." Sawyer rested his hands in his lap and shrugged. "Turned out she wasn't an orphan. Just had a... less-than-perfect home life.

"And that was when we got the signal that Reapers were in-system. So I picked her up, threw her over my shoulder and booked it back to the base as fast as I could, her kickin' and screamin' the whole way. Got to the shuttle, and we broke atmo just as we saw the first dreadnought heading down to the planet. She was crying, and I just kept tellin' her it would be alright." He shrugged again, absently straightening a piece of silverware on the table. "What else was I supposed to say?"

"What happened to her?" Vega asked quietly.

Sawyer stared thoughtfully up at the ceiling. "Don't know. The cruiser we were on was big. Refugees got separated pretty quickly from the soldiers, and when we got to the Citadel, we dropped 'em off same as all the rest.

"Still," he said, straightening in his seat. "Saw a lot of action during the war, same as anyone, but everywhere we went, there weren't any people left. Just husks to shoot. That was the only time I felt like I actually saved a life. Made a difference."

The whole table was silent. Marines stared at Sawyer, or their food, or at nothing in particular. Sawyer looked around, a bit confused.

"Shit, did I just kill the mood?"

The tension broke. A few people snickered or smiled. Vega clapped him on the back.

"Not bad," he said. "Not 'I once rode a harvester,' but not bad."

* * *

Garrus wandered into Shepard's cabin, rolling his neck to work out a kink that been bothering him since before dinner. Shepard was on her couch, in her usual dark tank top and shorts, reading a datapad.

"You didn't knock this time," she said.

"Sorry," he said, beginning to strip out of his armor.

"No, it's fine." She typed something in, not looking up. "It's about time you learned that door is always open for you."

"Doesn't mean I should just barge in," he muttered as he set down his chest piece and set to work on his greaves.

"It's not barging in, Garrus."

He hummed skeptically. Once he was down to his black underarmor, he settled in next to her, resting his fringe on the back of the couch and closing his eyes.

"Tired?" she asked.

"Something like it." He took a deep breath. "It's good."

"Mmhm."

For a minute Garrus just sat and listened to her type. Then he opened his eyes and looked over at her.

"What are you working on?" he asked.

"Plotting out our itinerary for the shakedown cruise," she said. "Figuring out what we know about where we're going."

"What do we know?"

Shepard frowned. "Not enough."

Garrus' brow plates lowered. He opened his mouth, but Shepard cut him off.

"What was that about earlier?" she asked, looking up at him. "During Sorono's transfer."

His mandibles flicked out and in, and he stretched out his legs. "Taetrus trash," he sighed.

"What?"

Garrus grimaced. "It's an insult. Taetrus is... kind of a backwater world in the Hierarchy. It was never exactly respectable, even before what happened with those separatists, Facinus."

"Heard about that." Shepard shifted her legs and brought them up onto his lap. He rested a hand on her calf and gently kneaded. "Flew a ship into the capital, didn't they?"

"At FTL speeds." Garrus shook his head. "Senseless. The Hierarchy went in with guns blazing. You know turians; we don't half-ass a military action."

"And you don't half-ass a resistance, either," Shepard said mildly, resting the datapad on her stomach.

He nodded slowly. "Hasn't been anything like that since the Unification War. After it was all said and done... well. Let's just say Taetrans aren't exactly looked upon with a lot of respect these days."

Shepard stared down at her knees for a moment, then back up at Garrus. "Can I ask about his fringe?"

Garrus winced. "Not... really."

She grimaced. "Sorry."

"No, it's just... it's not something you talk about." He reached up and ran a hand along the top of his own fringe, feeling strangely self-conscious. "It's a turian thing. I mean, it's like if you were missing a... a..."

"Hand?" she ventured. "Eye?"

"Breast."

Her eyes widened. "Oh."

Garrus scratched at his tattoos. "He doesn't cover it up because he's an ass who likes to make people uncomfortable, but if you actually draw attention to it... it's weird, I know-"

"No, no. I think I understand."

Shepard reached forward and briefly squeezed his hand. Garrus smiled reflexively. She went back to her datapad, while he went back to kneading her calf and quietly dozing. He put one foot up on her coffee table, and when she didn't object, he put the other up as well.

"You speak with Kaidan yet?"

He didn't open his eyes. "No."

"You should."

He shrugged. "There's nothing to say."

She stopped typing. "Are you sure?"

He wasn't, really. "I'm sure."

Garrus could feel her staring at him. After a moment, she resumed her work. "I hear about any macho posturing from either of you, I'm blowing you both out the airlock."

"Duly noted," he said with a grin.

The night wore on. Eventually, Shepard finished her work and tossed the datapad on the table with a frown, seemingly unsatisfied. After she fell asleep, Garrus stared up at the stars and the glittering ships of the galactic fleet through the window above her bed, feeling the slow rise and fall of her chest as she lay against him.


	9. Regret, Remorse, and Dinner Conversation

The next day went as quickly as the first. The rest of the crewmen arrived, along with Cortez's new shuttle, and Garrus had his hands full with both, so Shepard rarely saw him. She split her time between the war room, looking up everything and anything Alliance databases had on the Alpha Centauri cluster, and dealing with their final arrivals.

Lorkhan Din arrived in a turian shuttle, of all things, but considering what the krogan did for Palaven, Shepard supposed the turians owed them a few ships. He trundled out the airlock, as large as life, and grinned when he saw her. He was followed shortly by another krogan hauling a large crate, who Din loudly berated when he dropped it a bit too roughly. She'd asked what was inside, and was told 'personal effects.' She had a pair of crewmen carry it off to his quarters. Gently.

The last officer to board had been Korbin Vorek. He arrived alone, without his family, and spoke only when spoken to. He looked harried, and as pale as she had seen him over the vidlink, but he was professional and courteous, and rather than see his quarters, wished only to be taken to his workstation in the war room. As far as Shepard knew, he spent the rest of the day there.

By dinner, the Normandy had really begun to come together – she had her full complement of crew, all supplies and cargo present and accounted for, all officers aboard, and everything in order. The mess hall was filled almost to capacity, and with the larger table full, Shepard and Garrus had taken seats at one of the smaller tables closer to the galley. Gardner had made a kind of gumbo, and some sort of kebab for the dextros. Garrus had been practically bouncing in his seat with anticipation. It was almost adorable, until he started wolfing it down in front of her.

"Jesus, Garrus," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "Don't choke."

Garrus tore another strip of meat off the metal kebab, looking a bit sheepish as he chewed and swallowed. "Sorry. Haven't had krysae in almost a year."

"It's that good?"

He paused to take a deep sniff of the charred, stringy meat, and sighed euphorically. "It's better."

"You're welcome!" Gardner called from the galley, stirring a pot with a long spoon.

Garrus looked at the mess sergeant, then back at her. "Shepard, I'm leaving you for Gardner."

Shepard scoffed. "He doesn't have nearly enough scars for you."

"Aw man, come on," Joker whined from the next table over. "I'm eating here!"

EDI's expressionless face turned, head tilting slightly. "Jeff, your extranet search history would seem to preclude your-"

Joker began loudly shushing EDI. Sawyer and Vega started laughing. Even Kaidan was grinning, though it seemed a little forced from where Shepard sat.

"Are all human stomachs so weak?" Din asked conversationally, taking a deep swig of something that looked like wine.

"Apparently not," Sorono said a little too loudly, shooting Shepard a smile and a wiggle of his browplates.

She sneered and pointedly looked away, more than ready to ignore the comment, when she heard Garrus rumbling next to her. She turned and found him bristling.

"I think it's story time," he said loudly, setting down his kebab. "I nominate our new chief engineer."

Sorono looked thoroughly unconcerned as all eyes turned on him. "Most of my stories involve you, you know."

"So tell one that doesn't," Garrus snapped.

There was a strangely tense silence between them as they glared at each other. It lingered long enough that Shepard actually thought that things might escalate further, but Sorono looked away. He gently patted the air between him and Garrus.

"Alright, alright," he said with a sigh. "Not like it'll compare to anyone else's..."

He leaned back in his seat, legs slipping further underneath the table, and rolled his jaw a bit before he started.

"So I was on this op once. Long time ago. Just me and two other lucky bastards. It goes about as bad as it can without being a failure, but hey. Primary objectives accomplished. Brass should be thrilled, right?"

Sorono took a drag off his cigarette. Joker coughed.

"Well, they were. They were so damn pleased with me personally that they sent me back home. To Taetrus. Assigned to the Boom Patrol."

"Boom Patrol?" Kaidan asked.

"Bomb squad and IED disposal," Sorono clarified. "Before they got theatrical and slammed a ship into the capital, Facinus used to be small scale. Everything from makeshift frags and mines to hotwired skycars."

He looked up for a moment, mandibles twitching softly. "Smallest I ever had was a shoebox, filled with antipersonnel shrapnel. Largest..." He shrugged. "A truckload of cheap semtex, maybe."

Sorono stubbed out his cigarette, and as he spoke, lit up another.

"Anyway, I was there for about three months, give or take. Defused a baker's dozen by that point, thought I was hot shit. And then a call comes in that there's an awful suspicious looking car parked outside this bank, so off we go. Me and my spotters.

"Boom Patrol worked like this: you had your tech, which is me, and a back-up, in case I get shot or trigger a deadman's switch. Then you had three spotters, who mingled with the inevitable crowds that formed or got up on high ground and monitored incoming comm traffic. They let you know when you had to run, and took out anyone who looked like they might be about to make a very special call.

"So I'm elbow deep in the guts of this skycar, in the heavy and thoroughly useless armor they give the bomb techs, and I'm actually having trouble. The guy who wired the thing worked in a couple backups, alternate paths for the power to flow and start the feedback loop through the drive core. It was actually pretty impressive. You didn't see that kind of skill too often."

"Get to the point, Sor," Garrus said mildly, resting his chin on his hands.

Sorono narrowed his eyes and took a nice, long drag, smoke billowing out from behind his mandibles. Only then did he continue.

"I cut all the routes. Bomb defused. Feeling like king of the badasses. I dust off my hands and stroll away, and when I'm about halfway to the cordon the cops had established, one of my spotters starts yelling in my ear. Something about how ten different signals just entered traffic. So I start running. And I hear the word 'incoming' about half a second before the bomb goes off. Shockwave hits me hard in the back but I'm already diving for the ground."

He paused, regarded the lit end of his cigarette for a moment, then slowly shook his head.

"Kept running it through my head. There must have been another route. Self-contained in the comm unit of the car. Could have triggered the loop. One of those things you never know for sure."

Sorono took another drag, and sighed out the smoke.

"If I hadn't dove when I did, piece of the bumper going about fifty meters a second would have taken my head clean off. Instead..." He smiled and leaned forward, reaching for his drink and providing a view of his broken profile for the whole table. "All it did was ruin my good looks."

Shepard tilted her head and pointedly didn't look at his fringe. "You were more careful after that."

Sorono laughed, a harsh sound. "Hell no. Didn't much care. Didn't even wear the armor sometimes, when it was hot. Took me a couple years and a handful more near death experiences before I started to get careful."

"Some would argue you never did," Garrus said dryly.

"Hey, I'm not the one who started any barfights in Flux, Vakarian."

Garrus' mandibles shifted and he leaned back in his seat. "That was one time."

Sorono grinned in a knowing sort of way. "That you remember."

"What a pathetic story."

Everyone turned as one. Din was chewing slowly.

"Never said it was great," said Sorono.

"It's an embarrassment," the krogan rumbled. "You presumed yourself invincible, and you paid a price. If I had such a story, I would keep it to myself. Patience and care are virtues, not to be dismissed."

"Prideful son of a bitch, aren't you," Sorono muttered, taking a drink.

"Of course," Din said with a smile. "I am krogan."

"Never thought I'd hear a krogan talk about patience and care," Sawyer said curiously. "No offense."

"None taken." Din reached for his wine again. "Most of my people are witless idiots who lack the foresight to see past their next breath. They are so unused to the idea of a future that they don't know what to do with themselves now that they have one."

"But not you," Shepard noted.

One of his green eyes regarded her sidelong. He smiled. "Krogan have always had potential, Commander. I learned long ago not to waste mine."

Garrus shifted next to her, tapping an empty skewer against his plate. "Know another krogan who thinks like that. But he was never very patient."

"I don't know," Shepard said with a shrug. "Wrex put up with all of us. That counts for something."

"He put up with you," Garrus corrected. "Not me."

"Wonder why that could be," Joker remarked, barely audible on the other end of the table.

Shepard stifled her laugh. Din didn't. Garrus sneered at all of them and went back for another bite of his krysae.

* * *

When he'd finished his second kebab, Garrus looked up to say something cutting about their flight lieutenant's sense of humor, and found Shepard looking over his shoulder. He turned and saw Vorek walking over to the galley. He gathered up a bowl and spoon, and a glass of water. Gardner served him without a word. Food and drink in hand, Vorek walked back and sat down in a suddenly quiet mess hall.

Slowly, quiet conversation began to bubble up again, and it seemed like the discomfort had passed, until one of the marines seated across from the batarian started talking to him.

"You were a scientist, right?" he asked. Garrus thought he recognized the man. Someone from the SR-1. Nilsson, maybe. Or Matthews.

Vorek didn't look up from his food. "Yes."

"Did all kinds of work for the Hegemony, huh?"

"Yes."

"You must have been important. Kind of a big shot." Matthews, Garrus was certain now, leaned on his elbows. "You step on many toes to get there?"

Vorek said nothing, and continued to eat. Most of his table was looking away, or at their own food. Sorono was staring at nothing, the way he used to do on stakeouts. Din seemed more concerned with his food, but Garrus had no doubts he was paying attention. Sawyer kept glancing over at Shepard. And Shepard... she must have been waiting for this, because she had the same look in her eyes that she got sighting her first target of the day, peering sidelong at the scene unfolding at the other table.

"Batarians have a caste system, man," said another marine, Edwards, seated on Vorek's right. "They don't work their way up. They're born up."

"Well, well. So you're like a noble, huh? Silver spoon, blue blood, all that?"

Vorek remained silent. Matthews leaned in further, spoke more quietly.

"You have many slaves, four-eyes?"

"One," Vorek said, matter-of-factly.

"Ahh. Well, don't leave us hanging. What kind? Asari? Salarian?" The marine paused. "Human?"

Vorek reached for his drink. Edwards placed his hand firmly over the cup.

"The man asked you a question," he said.

Vorek took a breath and pulled his hand back. He regarded his bowl of gumbo with all four eyes. Garrus was about to stand up and start taking names when the batarian began to speak.

"He was an older man. Jobash, his name was. Tall. A bit frail. He'd been given to me by my superiors after a successful field test of an ablative armor program I'd been a part of."

He took a spoonful of food and chewed slowly. He swallowed, and continued.

"He was a criminal, according to the state. 'Associating with dissidents' and 'inciting rebellion.' When he pled guilty, his assets and property were seized, and he was sentenced to indentured servitude for the state while his family was sent to one of the work camps. He wrote letters to them every week, and even though he never received a reply, he was convinced they were alive and well."

There was a pause as Vorek took another few bites. No one in the room said a word until he continued.

"Occasionally, he'd drop a dish or something, but the interrogators had plucked out one of his eyes before he'd confessed, so his vision wasn't what it used to be. He still did his best for my family. Cared for my children like they were his own. When my daughter was born, he stayed in her room day and night. Watched over her. Sang her to sleep, sometimes."

Something in Vorek's jaw jumped. He took another spoonful of gumbo to cover it.

"When the Reapers arrived, they cut through the Hegemony's fleets like they weren't even there. I had already been making preparations to leave for some time, but when everything started to fall apart around us... it was a mad rush just to get to the few military ships still planetside. We lost each other in the frenzy, just before we got on board. He said he had to find his family."

Vorek set his spoon in his empty bowl. The clang of metal on metal cut through the oppressive silence.

"I like to think he did," he said as pushed himself to his feet. He took his dish, brought it back to Gardner's sink, and walked out.

Garrus looked at Shepard. She was staring where Vorek had sat. Suddenly, she stood, marched over, took the untouched glass of water he'd left behind, and headed for the elevator.

In the wake of her departure, there was a stunned silence. Garrus took the opportunity to march over and stand above Vorek's seat. The marines around him stiffened.

"Matthews. Edwards." Garrus stared at each of them in turn, hands clasped tightly behind his back. "I think we should have a nice, long talk in my cabin. Now."

* * *

Shepard entered the war room. Korbin Vorek was hunched over one of the terminals on the far wall, hands braced on either side. She walked over slowly and set the glass next to him.

He looked first at it, then at her. Shepard crossed her arms and shifted her weight. Vorek took a long drink, then set it down gently.

"Thank you, Commander."

"That won't happen again," she said.

"Yes it will. But I don't blame them." He pushed off the console and straightened. "I certainly don't blame you."

Shepard scowled briefly. "This is my ship, Vorek, and you're my crew. It won't happen again."

He didn't argue. He linked his hands behind his back and bowed his head to her.

She wanted to leave, but she wouldn't let herself. Of all the crew on board, she knew the least about Vorek, and she wouldn't let her own discomfort affect her job."You have children?"

He stiffened. "Yes."

"How old?"

"My daughter just turned six." His jaw clenched. "My son would have been thirteen this year."

Shepard flinched and turned away. "I'm sorry."

"I was lucky," Vorek said, breath quaking slightly as he turned his head as well. "So many others have no sons or daughters."

They were silent, staring at the large holo of the galactic fleet that dominated the center of the dark room. The Normandy's position was marked, a pulsing dot in the midst of the swarm.

"Jobash is a batarian name, isn't it."

In her peripheral vision, she saw Vorek nod.

"Is he why you defected?"

A long sigh, followed by a longer silence.

"Would that life were so simple," he said quietly. He turned to face her fully, and she met his eyes, the lower set. "There was no revelatory moment, Commander. No great injustice that opened my eyes. It was a slow thing. Many years of silent doubts and lingering questions that I could not ask and which would not be answered."

"Did you get your answers?"

He nodded.

"And now? How do you feel?"

He looked away again. His upper eyes closed.

"Would it surprise you to learn that part of me misses it?"

Shepard's jaw clenched. It did, a little. But she kept her head together.

"I won't pretend to know what it was like," she began slowly, "but I know it can't have been easy to walk away from everything you've ever known."

Vorek opened his eyes and looked at her, surprised.

"And I won't pretend to know you, having just met." Shepard uncrossed her arms and willed herself not to fidget. "But I'm good at reading people. And I think you're a good man, Korbin Vorek."

He blinked several times, two sets of eyes working separately. He smiled a little.

"No, I'm not," he said. "But for you, Commander, I will try to be."


	10. Flagellation

Shepard turned the corner into the mess hall. Everyone had left, save for Garrus, two marines standing at full attention, and Gardner, storing leftovers in the galley.

Garrus had his hands behind his back and looked royally pissed. She hadn't seen him this incensed since Sidonis. The marines' expressions were the kind of stoically fearful that she saw a lot in boot camp.

She stepped in front of them and crossed her arms, saying nothing. One of them, Matthews, was stupid enough to speak.

"Commander-"

The glare she sent him would have shaken a krogan. Shepard knew that for a fact – she'd used it on Grunt twice. Matthews promptly shut his mouth and stared into the middle distance.

She let them stew for another ten seconds.

"I expected better from you," she said harshly. "You don't serve on this ship and disrespect another crewman. That does not happen. Ever. Am I understood?"

"Yes, ma'am!" came the simultaneous reply.

"Every single person on this ship, including yourselves, is here because I want them here. You disrespect them, you're disrespecting me." She turned to Edwards in particular. "Would you disrespect me?"

Edwards promptly lost some of his color. "No, ma'am!"

"If this happens again, if I see even the slightest offense given to another crewman, you're relieved of duty until I can find the nearest Alliance base to dump you. And I will make it clear to your next CO that I was very, very unhappy with your conduct. Am I understood?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

She took a step back and gave them both one last hard look. "You're confined to quarters until we reach Alpha Centauri. Be thankful I don't have a proper brig to throw you in. Dismissed."

The two marines saluted and marched quickly from the room, heading for the communal bunks. Once they were gone, Shepard breathed out a sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"I'm sorry."

She looked up. Garrus was staring at the floor, shaking his head, hands still behind his back.

"Matthews had family on Mindoir, and Edwards was on Elysium during the Blitz." He clamped his mandibles tight against his face. "I should have known this would happen."

Shepard shrugged helplessly. "Matthews and Edwards were old crew, Garrus. SR-1 alumni. You expected better from them, and so did I."

He huffed. "Second day on the job, and I've already screwed something up."

"Hey." Shepard stepped close. "You did exactly what I would have."

Eventually, he met her eyes and nodded. Shepard relaxed and stepped back, taking a seat at a now empty table. Garrus wandered over and sat across from her.

"How badly you chew them out before I got back?" she asked.

"Bad," Garrus replied simply.

"Real bad," Gardner interjected as he closed the refrigerator door. "Could hear it through the bulkhead."

They both turned and looked at the mess sergeant. He looked back and shrugged.

"What? These ears do more than just frame my face, you know."

Shepard felt a smile tugging at her lips. "You think they had it coming?"

"Course they had it coming!" he said, leaning against the counter. "I'm no big fan of batarians either, but this is your ship, and anyone who's on it deserves some common god damn courtesy. Took all my self-control not to start putting boots in asses myself."

Gardner paused, then cleared his throat and ran a hand over his balding head. "Not that it's my place or anything. Ma'am."

Shepard was full on grinning now. "Gardner, you can lay down the law in your mess hall any time you feel appropriate. Consider that a standing order."

The mess sergeant's eyes widened. He smiled, straightened and saluted proudly. "Aye aye, ma'am!"

"Careful, Shepard," Garrus drawled. "Establishing fiefdoms in an empire is always a sign of decline."

She leveled a finger at him. "I go down, I'm taking you with me, Vakarian."

He grinned. "What a noble sentiment."

A pause. Gardner coughed.

"Think I'll go root around with the plumbing a bit and catch some shut-eye." He saluted again, more casually. "Ma'am."

Gardner walked off, heading for the restrooms. Shepard leaned on the table and hugged her elbows.

"Vorek alright?" Garrus asked quietly.

Shepard nodded slowly. "Yeah. He's alright."

Garrus hummed an acknowledgment. "Think this'll happen again?"

"Do you?"

He scratched a browplate idly. "Probably. Once, maybe twice more. You'll have to come down hard before the crew settles."

She nodded. "But they'll settle."

His mandibles quivered. "Well. You are Commander Shepard."

She groaned. "Don't say it like that."

"I know, I know," he said, briefly raising his hands. "You don't like being special."

She furrowed her brow and shot him a look as she rested her chin in her hand. "I just get enough of that from the galaxy at large," she said. "I don't want it from you too."

Slowly, Garrus leaned forward on his elbows. He reached over and squeezed her hand briefly. "You know who you are to me."

Shepard smiled that little half-smile she knew he liked. "Maybe I could use a reminder."

Garrus flared one mandible and lowered a browplate. "Then maybe we should continue this conversation in private."

"Your place or mine?" she asked.

He laughed and she joined him. When he stood and gestured for her to lead the way, she did.

Once they were insider her cabin, he nuzzled into her neck and whispered her given name, the one she'd always hated. She didn't mind it so much when he used it.

* * *

They were both up early that morning, well before shift change. Garrus was making a concerted effort to get back to his previous sleep schedule, and Shepard was too restless to simply lay in bed when he rose. There wasn't a lot left to do before they shipped out, but there was enough that they had their hands full.

Which was good. Work distracted her from the nagging guilt that had been brewing since her first day aboard.

Shepard kept running back to the war room, searching Alliance records on every world in the entire Centauri cluster. They ran the gamut from class-M habitable to gas giant to tiny, blazing rock so close to the sun it was practically molten. And still not one damn clue as to what they might be walking into, what the Alliance might have found, or what possible threats could exist.

Meanwhile, everyone around her was smiling and laughing and glad to be there. Even Garrus. Even her, sometimes, when she could push her worries to the back of her mind and let herself feel at home again.

But the more she tried, the worse she felt. And the worse she felt, the more meticulous she became.

Shepard made her rounds early that day, moving from deck to deck, making absolutely certain they were ready for anything. Vega was one of her first stops. He was in the mess hall, leaning against the kitchen island with his arms crossed, speaking to a handful of marines. He straightened when he noticed her.

"Commander." He snapped a quick salute, purely to set an example, and the marines behind him did the same. "What can I do for you?"

"Just making sure we're ready, James."

"Don't worry, Shepard," he said with a jerk of his head. "These boys might not look like much, but they got it where it counts. Besides, what's gonna happen?"

It took a great deal of her self-control not to flinch. "Yeah, well. Call me paranoid." She forced a smile. "I'll leave you to it."

Shepard was halfway to the elevator and most of the way toward convincing herself to head for the war room again when she heard a voice behind her.

"Commander?"

She turned. It was one of Vega's marines. One of the two from last night.

"What is it, Edwards?"

He glanced around, then spoke quietly. "I just... wanted to apologize, ma'am. For my conduct last night. I... should have had more respect for you."

She frowned. "I'm not the one you should be apologizing to, Edwards."

Edwards blinked and his voice left him for a moment. He quickly steeled himself. "I know that, ma'am."

"Then get to it."

"Yes, ma'am."

Shepard almost dismissed him, but hesitated.

"Do you trust me, Edwards?" she asked.

He looked a little startled. "With my life, ma'am."

Shepard clenched her teeth for a moment. "Then trust me about this. Dismissed."

Edwards saluted again and walked away, headed straight for the elevator. Probably going straight to Vorek to apologize. Or try to, anyway.

She sighed heavily and tugged nervously on the bottom of her uniform. Next stop on her list was engineering.

* * *

The doors hissed open, and she was greeted by the welcome sound of flanging laughter.

"You? Working on one of their tanks? Oh, that is precious."

She stepped inside, and when she rounded the corner, found Garrus and Adams leaning against the console and staring down at turian feet. Sorono was underneath, a light hissing and sparking coming from his omni-tool as he resealed a panel.

"Contrary to what you may think, you are not always the smartest son of a bitch in the room," he said haughtily. "I made marked improvements to the Mako."

"Which wasn't exactly hard," Adams added wryly. Garrus pointed a finger at his own eye, then at Adams, who raised his hands innocently.

Neither of them had noticed her yet, so Shepard leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. She had a minute. Listening to Garrus talk usually helped her settle herself.

"Couldn't have been," Sorono drawled as he worked. "Garrus is a software man. He can recompile code all day long, but the moment he has to do something with his hands-"

"I've modded every weapon I've ever owned," Garrus said defensively.

"Guns don't count."

"Explain that logic to me."

"You're a turian," Sorono said slowly, as if to a child. "They don't count."

Garrus sighed in exasperation. "That's not the point of this story anyway."

"There's a point?"

"Fuck you," he said mildly. "The point is that Shepard didn't know how to drive the damn thing. No one on the ship did."

"Oh yeah? So who drove it?"

"Shepard."

"But you just said-"

Garrus grinned. "Exactly what she told us."

"That sounds like her all right," Adams said with a laugh. "You can always trust Shepard to give it to you straight."

Their conversation continued as Shepard's fingers tightened around her bicep. That just about tore it. She pushed off the wall and stepped into engineering proper.

"Gentlemen."

Garrus and Adams straightened while Sorono pulled himself out from under the console. "Hey Commander," Adams greeted with a casual salute. "What can we do for you?"

"Final check-in," she said curtly. "Everything good?"

"Systems are green and chutes are clean, Commander," Sorono said with a grunt as he pushed himself off the floor. "She's running better than she was right out of drydock. Whoever ran this place before I got here did a hell of a job."

"That'd be me," Adams said. "And Ms. Tali'Zorah."

"Uh huh. Figured it was a quarian." He raised a hand, palm out. "No offense, Adams."

"Carry on," Shepard cut in. "No cut corners from either of you. And Garrus, when you're done here, we need to talk in private."

She turned on her heel and walked out, running through what she knew and how she'd tell him in her head. The tightness in her chest was still there – now that her mind was made up, the guilt had migrated to betraying Hackett's confidence.

There really wasn't a clean way out of this.

* * *

The glass-walled conference room was empty. Shepard stood with her arms crossed, staring out the viewports at the stars. They were starting to move away from the fleet at impulse speed, preparing for the FTL jump to Alpha Centauri.

Garrus entered the room, glass door shutting quietly behind him. "You wanted to see me?"

She didn't turn. Instead, she keyed at her omni-tool. "EDI, confirm that all surveillance is cut for this room. No incoming or outgoing transmissions."

"Confirmed, Shepard," came EDI's reply out of her omni-tool's speakers. "I will re-engage surveillance only on your order."

"Good. Log me out, EDI."

Her omni-tool's interface disappeared and she went back to staring out the window. Garrus walked up beside her.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She took a breath.

"This isn't just a shakedown cruise," she said.

Garrus chewed on that for a moment, then grunted and followed her gaze out the window. "Had a feeling."

"Am I that obvious?"

"Only to me." He turned and looked at her. "Why the secrecy?"

Shepard frowned a little and wouldn't meet his eyes. "Hackett's orders."

"He thinks we're a leaky boat?"

"I think he's playing it as safe as he can," she said. "Which makes me think whatever we find out there, it's going to be bad."

Garrus didn't ask anything more. She'd asked him here, she'd come to it in her own time. He stared back out the window.

"We have an installation in the Alpha Centauri system. Small, camouflaged, and out of the way. It went dark a few months after the war."

"After?"

She nodded. "As far as we're aware, the Reapers never even entered the system."

Garrus paused. "So we're not thinking they just missed the base entirely."

"No."

"So we could be walking straight into something the Reapers wanted to leave alone."

"Yeah."

His mandibles flickered and he crossed his arms, staring at the bulkhead pylon between the viewports. "Why are you telling me this now?"

She shifted anxiously. "I hate lying to my crew, Garrus. I especially hate lying to you. And no, not because of... us. Because I value your opinion and trust your judgment."

Garrus looked at her. "You know if our positions were reversed, I would have told you."

Shepard clenched her jaw, glaring at her reflection in the reinforced glass. She looked furious with herself.

He rested a hand on her shoulder. "But turians are notoriously bad liars."

She huffed and smiled very slightly, meeting his eyes for the first time since he walked in. "How should I play this, Garrus?"

He let his hand drop from her shoulder and shrugged. "How long were we supposed to be kept in the dark?"

She grimaced. "As long as possible."

"Then wait until we're in system. Cut off all outgoing transmissions, engage the stealth drive, and tell the crew what they're in for."

"They won't like it."

"They'll understand."

"The ones who know me. What about the ones who don't?"

He crossed his arms. "They'll learn to understand."

Shepard's eyes fell, wandering across the floor as she thought. Eventually, she nodded.

"Okay," she said. "Okay."

The light outside the viewport seemed to shift and ripple. Colors formed, blue waves flaring red as they traveled along the length of the ship.

"How long until we get there?" he asked.

"A few hours. Three, at most."

He uncrossed his arms and gestured to the door. "Come on. We stay in here too long, people will talk."

That got a smile out of her. "They talk enough already."

As they walked out of the glass-walled conference room, Shepard keyed on her omni-tool and began to send the signal to EDI to resume surveillance.

"Leaky boat?" she asked.

He grinned. "Something I heard Joker say once. Seemed appropriate."

Shepard chuckled dryly. "Of course."


	11. Once More Unto the Breach

Shepard had the crew gather in the mess hall. It was easier than trying to fit them all into the briefing room, and the CIC was too impersonal for this.

They'd dropped out of FTL an hour ago. Alpha Centauri's binary stars winked at them from outside the viewports. The stealth drive was engaged, EDI had severed all outgoing communications, and she had received one final, detailed briefing from Hackett on the QEC, along with a heavily encryped data packet transmitted on a secure channel. They were all as ready as they were going to be.

Now it was just a matter of coming clean.

"Those of you who know me, know that I value trust," she said, standing at the head of the largest mess hall table. "Once earned, it's the most important bond we have. But I've always believed it has to go both ways, or it means nothing."

Shepard scanned the crowd, lingered on a few faces. Adams. Chakwas. Joker. "Each of you has put your trust in me. It's only right that I do the same."

She straightened and linked her hands behind her back. "This isn't a routine shakedown cruise. We've had orders to investigate a Systems Alliance research installation for the last four days. I was told to keep it quiet, for the sake of the mission. But I won't let anyone on this ship walk into something they aren't prepared for. And from the sound of it, we'll need to be at our best.

"Those of you who know me, I hope you understand. Those of you who don't..." Her gaze drifted to specific crewmen, then to her officers, particularly Vorek and Din. "All I can do is tell you that this will not happen again. This ship and this crew deserve better from me, and I won't hold myself to a different standard than I would hold any of you."

Shepard took a moment, then straightened. "If anyone has any objections to this mission or my command, speak now. It will be noted in my report."

Five seconds passed. Ten. Fifteen. No one said a word.

Shepard bowed her head. "Thank you," she said. Then she straightened. "Officers, to the briefing room. All other crewmen, dismissed."

* * *

"This," she said, pulling up a holo, "is where we're going."

The planet flickered into life above the center of the briefing room table, information scrolling alongside it in neat little boxes. A class-M world, barely habitable, nothing but vast mountain ranges and mineral deposits too small to justify large-scale mining.

"The installation is located here," she said, gesturing near the equator of the planet. "It's nestled in one of the small mountain ranges, tucked into a little canyon. Sensor shielding is in full effect, and any attempts to communicate have been ignored."

"What's the layout?" Vega asked, leaning against the bulkhead.

Shepard pulled up another holo, replacing the original. A three dimensional floor plan of the base appeared – a top level, with access to the sole landing pad, and a single, massive elevator shaft leading down, with floors at regular intervals until the bottom, where the labs and power plant were located.

"We drop off at the top and assess the situation. If things look as bad as our intel suggests, then our first priority is to plant a bomb on the main power core. Long as we have a detonator that's proximity based, it'll only go off once we reach a safe distance. We work our way up, locate any survivors, and extract."

"Simple," Din rumbled from the opposite end of the table. "But effective."

"I can whip up a bomb and detonator like that in about ten minutes," Sorono said, taking a drag off his cigarette. "Give or take."

"We concerned about recovering any data they might have?" Kaidan asked.

Shepard shook her head. "If the facility is compromised, the data is destroyed along with everything else."

"Hackett's order?"

"Mine," she said sternly. "The brass can chew me out later."

"Sounds like you're thinking they weren't doing anything good down there," Sawyer ventured.

"Hackett's the admiral of the Fifth Fleet," she said, crossing her arms. "If he didn't know about this place, it means someone didn't tell him. And I can't think of a reason for them not to that ends in anything good."

"Another bomb on Tuchanka," Garrus grumbled.

She nodded slowly, then looked up at her gunnery officer. "Din, I want those guns ready to fire at a moment's notice."

He tilted his broad head, green eyes glinting. "You believe there is something down there that might require a precision orbital strike?"

"I don't know what's down there," she said simply.

"But you point the gun anyway." He pushed away from the table. "Wise, Commander. The guns will be calibrated before you make planetfall."

Shepard was close enough to hear Garrus snort softly. She did her best not to smile and turned to Sorono. "Sartorus, after you've got that bomb rigged up, I want you in engineering."

"Making sure the ship won't fly apart and the engines are running extra hot." He nodded and flexed a mandible. "You got it."

"And try to pay attention to Adams," she said with a small frown. "He knows this ship better than you. Don't forget that."

He bowed his head and made a sort of conciliatory gesture with his hand, smoke trailing.

"Sawyer." His head snapped to her. "We're going to need some pretty specific gear for this. We have field chutes and line guns?"

"Plenty of, ma'am," he said. "I was thorough, and Lieutenant Cortez was helpful with procurements."

"Good. Vega," she said, and he straightened off the wall. "I want you with me on this. You too, Garrus."

Both men nodded sternly.

"Which leaves the ship in your hands, Kaidan." She grinned tightly. "Let's hope it goes smoother than Ilos did."

Kaidan scoffed quietly. "Let's hope."

She was about to dismiss them when she saw Vorek shifting uncomfortably at the opposite end of the table.

"Something wrong, Vorek?" she asked.

He shook his head and linked his hands behind his back. "Nothing wrong, Commander. But... I would appreciate it if you kept your omni-tools active and recording. If something happens, I'll need the data to analyze."

Shepard nodded. After a moment, EDI's blue orb materialized above the conference table.

"I will record and store any data I receive from their hardsuit links, Dr. Vorek," she said.

His eyes blinked in sequence, top then bottom. "Thank you."

Shepard regarded the room at large. "You have your orders. Ground team, be ready to move in thirty." She nodded with finality. "Dismissed."

* * *

Shepard kept from fidgeting, arms crossed and eyes closed, but Garrus was keying at his omni-tool and James bounced his foot up and down anxiously as the shuttle made its way through the atmosphere of Centauri Theta. There was still the possibility, however slim, that things weren't as bad as they seemed.

Once the shuttle made visual contact with the installation, that possibility vanished in a puff of smoke.

The research station was partially camouflaged, built into the side of a sheer cliff of red rock in the narrow fissure of a canyon. The base itself was entirely underground. The only visible sign of it was the landing platform, itself built around a rocky outcropping.

It was covered in scorch marks, rubble, and the burnt out chassis of three Kodiak shuttles. They didn't look like they'd even made it off the ground.

Cortez couldn't land. There wasn't enough space. He hovered as low as he could over the platform, and Shepard and her team leapt out.

"Keep the engine running, Cortez," she said as she drew her rifle. "We'll be back."

"You got it, Commander," came the response through the comm.

They performed a quick sweep of the area. Plenty of destruction, weapons fire, spent heat sinks, and dust blown in from the desert. But no bodies, no signs of hostiles. No sign of any life whatsoever.

"Alright, people," Shepard said, "looks like the facility has been compromised. We go in, rescue what survivors we can, and blow the place."

"I can live with that," Vega said, eyes still scanning for hostiles.

"We sure that bomb will do the job?" Shepard asked, eyeing the round metal casing the size of a bowling ball attached to Garrus' lower back.

"Plant it on the side of the primary power core, and it will," Garrus said. "Which is, of course, at the heart of the base and not just inside the front door."

Shepard signaled and they fell in behind her. Cortez pulled the shuttle away as they passed through the first archway. He'd be back to extract them, but there was no need for him to stick around in case there were still hostiles here in force.

None of the doors were powered, which meant breaching them was a matter of cutting through the seals with omni-tools and forcing them open. Once they were through the abandoned security checkpoints and inside the base proper, it was pitch black. They had to switch on their hardsuit flashlights, and things started to look grim.

"Lot of blood here, Lola. Not a lot of bodies."

There was indeed a lot of blood, dried nearly black in tacky pools and occasionally spattered on the walls in patterns that spoke of desperate struggle. Pockmarks and debris scattered the floor, broken glass and upturned desks, potted plants spreading dirt and ceramic over the ground, and a shattered aquarium, its jagged edges still retaining a small amount of stagnant water while the fish flopped and gasped on the floor. Numerous small barricades had been erected in corridors and against doors from whatever had been at hand.

There wasn't anywhere to look that didn't scream 'firefight.' Still, there was something off about the whole place. Something that bothered her and made everything seem wrong somehow.

"Shepard?"

She turned. Garrus was regarding a particularly heavy barricade, numerous pieces of office furniture piled up against a door along the corridor they were taking to the main elevator shaft. Shepard stepped alongside him and regarded it, then checked the floor plan they'd been given on her omni-tool.

"These are someone's quarters."

He nodded. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

Shepard grimaced. "I'm thinking that this place wasn't attacked from the outside."

No more words were exchanged until they reached the elevator shaft. It descended ten levels, directly into the mountain. Once they planted the bomb, they could worry about finding any survivors, although at this point, Shepard had serious doubts about their success in that endeavor.

The elevator was at their level, but like everything else, offline. After they forced the doors open, Garrus cut a sizable hole into the floor with the plasma cutter on his omni-tool. The deck plating fell away, taking a good ten seconds before they heard the clang of it clattering against the base of the shaft.

"Well, I'm not going first," Garrus said dryly.

Shepard looked to Vega. "James, you take point."

He took a deep breath. "You know, I was really hoping we wouldn't have to do this."

James crossed his arms over his chest, kept his legs together, and jumped into the void. The mass effect parachute strapped onto the back of his hardsuit slowed his descent once he reached half his terminal velocity, and he decelerated before gently alighting ten levels down.

"Clear," his voice came from Shepard's omni-tool. "Christ. That was a rush."

She looked to Garrus and gave him a tight smile. She gestured at the hole.

"Age before beauty."

He tilted his head. "I think objectively we're the same age."

"I refuse to count the two years I was dead. Now get in the hole."

Garrus grumbled something and jumped, keeping his legs tightly together and his head bowed, so neither his fringe nor his spurs caught on the edges. His parachute triggered just as easily.

"Sweet spirits, Shepard," his flanging voice sighed out of her omni-tool. "If I ever have to do that again..."

"Quit your whining and be ready to catch me," she shot back. Then she jumped.

A sensation of falling, her stomach leaping into her throat, the inevitability of gravity terrifying in the air... then the pins and needles sensation of a mass effect field wrapping around her, slowing her. She landed just as easily as the others.

Vega had breached the doors already, scouting the corridors ahead. Garrus had waited for Shepard at the bottom of the shaft.

"Always heard that paratroopers were crazy, and now I know why," he said as she landed. "That was worse than my zero-g field training."

"I hear you," Shepard said as her heart rate slowed. "But I'd still take that over weightlessness."

Garrus said nothing. She'd woken up next to him gasping for air too many times to not know what she was talking about.

They climbed out of the shaft and found Vega, shouldering his shotgun and looking profoundly disturbed. It didn't take long to figure out why - even in the dim light of their flashlights, the carnage was readily apparent. If what had happened above was a desperate firefight, this was a slaughterhouse. Where before blood had been in distinct pools, down here, it was everywhere, coating nearly the entire floor of the corridor in miasmic gore. Some of it looked fresh, but there still wasn't a single body.

And it was far, far too quiet.

"Commander," Vega said, voice tight. "Permission to blow this place to hell and get the fuck out of here."

"Permission granted," Shepard replied. "Move."

The floor plan was easy enough to follow, and most of the doors they ran into were already open - all from the inside. Eventually they reached the door to the primary power core, housed in the center of the base. It had been blown wide open, and the amount of furniture and debris around it suggested that this had been where the initial attack had occurred - it was the largest barricade they'd yet seen, thoroughly destroyed and scattered.

Shepard signaled _(sweep, stay tight, on my six)_ and they entered, Vega scanning left, Garrus right.

The power core was still functional, barely, the massive ball glowing and flickering on its pedastal, providing just enough light to see the rest of the chamber. Lined across the floor and the wall and the ceiling of the spherical room were dozens of what looked like Dragon's Teeth, stained with blood.

And just below the dim core was a smaller object, about seven and a half feet in height. Broad and curved and strangely bulbous in spots, it looked like a piece of abstract art. Its polished ebony surface was marked with scratches that might have been script or perhaps was simple wear, and it ended in a rough diagonal point, as if it were broken off of something larger. Its position in the room seemed almost reverent.

"You seen anything like that before, Shepard?" Garrus asked.

"No." She frowned. "But I think I know Reaper tech when I see it."

Hackett hadn't told her exactly what the purpose of this installation was. Which meant he didn't know. If he did, he would have told her to bomb this place from orbit.

"Not that that thing isn't _grande da miedo,_ but I'm more concerned with the fact that we haven't seen a single damn thing since we got in here." Vega shifted and scanned behind them. "This ain't right. Not one bit."

"Plant the charge." Shepard nodded to Garrus. "We'll cover you."

What followed was one of the longest minutes of Shepard's life. She didn't know what it was about this place that made her so uneasy. Well, she knew, but it shouldn't be bothering her quite so much. She had been inside a dead Reaper once. She'd seen worse than this, and she knew it.

So why was her skin crawling? Why did she feel the almost overpowering need to run like hell and not look back?

She placed the blame on the unknown Reaper artifact. Whatever it was, whatever it's purpose, it was clearly having some kind of effect on her. Shepard shook her head and steeled herself. She wouldn't be brought low now. The Reapers were dead. All of them. She had seen to that. Now all that was left was to clean up the mess they'd left behind.

"Charge is armed." Garrus stepped quickly away from the core and skirted around the edge of the strange monolith, not wanting to get close to it. "Detonator's based on distance. Once we pass out of range, it'll blow. Guaranteed."

Shepard blew out a breath in relief. "Then let's get-"

The room seemed to buck under her feet. Shepard collapsed to her knees and Garrus fell beside her. Everything was vibrating, or she was trembling. She didn't know. There was screaming, endless, anguished screaming ringing in her ears. Hundreds of voices in undefinable agony.

She slammed her eyes shut and in the black she saw them die, all of them, tearing each other apart with their bare hands and throwing the remains before the monolith, or upon the Teeth, then carrying them, piecing them back together, transforming them, changing them into more, and the survivors fleeing for their lives, establishing barricades as the monolith spoke to them, whispered, turned them one by one.

She saw them, the ones who turned, overloading the shuttles on the landing platform and burning themselves alive inside them, taking the last hope of escape. Then those who remained barricading themselves inside as they waited for a rescue that would never come.

Shepard forced her eyes open and the images left her. She stared down at the deck plating below her, willing herself not to blink, still half-caught in the images. She needed something real, something to anchor her to the present. She tore off a gauntlet, feeling the steel with her fingers. She found it, and pushed herself up, staggering a little.

She grabbed at Garrus, yanked him off the floor and onto his feet. He was incoherent, hissing and growling and snarling, barely able to stand. She ran her bare hand along his face, and the faraway look in his eyes disappeared. He grabbed at her and steadied himself.

"You with me?" she rasped, her throat too tight.

He nodded shakily. "Vega."

Shepard left him reluctantly, reaching for Vega next. He was babbling in Spanish, words she barely recognized repeated over and over, until she pulled him up and slapped him across the face. He seemed to snap out of it, shaking his head and rubbing his forehead.

"We're getting the hell out of here."

As they scrambled for the door, she heard screaming again. But it wasn't in her head. Shepard spun, and husks began pouring out of the access vents around the walls and ceiling of the room.

No. Not husks. There was no telltale glow to them, no metallic components, no slowly spreading cybernetics. They were organic. Human.

But wrong.

Arms in the wrong places, legs bending the wrong way. Some had too many limbs, others had too few. Some were larger, two or three times the mass of a human being, an impossible tangle of flesh and bone somehow crawling its way along the ceiling. Some were small, tiny and bony and skittering towards them. And every mouth, where ever it was, was twisted and gaping and screaming incoherently.

James spun and fired his shotgun, the thundering sound echoing off the walls. Shepard backed up and fired her Revenant, holding down the trigger until the heat sink steamed while Garrus ran for the elevator shaft. Shepard kept close behind and turned to find him already firing his line gun up the shaft. She slapped her rifle onto the back of her hardsuit and wrapped her arms around his cowl and they lifted into the air, speeding up ten levels in a matter of seconds. She grabbed for the hole Garrus had cut, climbing up while he descended again for Vega.

Shepard waited with her heart in her throat until they rose again. When they pulled themselves through the hole, Vega and Garrus collapsed, breathing fast and hard.

"What in the _fuck,_" Vega spat.

"I don't know," Shepard said, voice wavering more than she wanted. "Those... aren't Reapers."

"They were human," Garrus said quietly.

"Those things were _not_ human," Vega shouted. "What do you-"

"Shh!" Shepard held up a hand and listened.

The screaming from the bottom of the shaft was getting louder.

A quick glance in the hole confirmed her fears – somehow, they were climbing up the walls, and more than halfway to the top.

"Move!" she shouted, shoving them out of elevator and keying her comm. "Cortez! Extraction!"

"-tain?" The pilot's voice crackled in her ear, pitched and warbling.

"Cortez," she shouted, bursting through another door, "do you read me?!"

"-ting s-e in-ference, but - read you. ETA - minutes."

They sprinted through the facility and were almost to the entrance when Shepard fell, slipping in front of the destroyed aquarium. She landed on her stomach, knocking the wind out of her, and she struggled to regain her feet as Garrus spun around to pick her up.

Shepard looked down to find that she'd tripped on one of the fish, still flopping around on the floor.

And then she remembered that this base went dark months ago.

She turned. A plant lay on its side, pot broken and earth scattered. Its leaves were green and healthy.

For the first time in a long time, Shepard couldn't move, couldn't act, couldn't think as the weight of realization came crashing down on her.

It wouldn't let them die.

Garrus yanked her to her feet and she stumbled. He gripped her forearm hard and practically dragged her along as he ran. The shrieking and wailing behind them was almost deafening now.

They burst out into the light of day, the red rock mountains around them and sickly yellow sky bringing Shepard back to reality. Her finger flew to her ear.

"Cortez, get us the fuck out of here!"

The shuttle flew in from the side and hovered just off the edge of the platform. Vega went first, leaping on board and immediately going for the turret, sliding the gun out far enough to cover them.

Shepard shoved Garrus forward and for once he didn't argue. He climbed aboard and held out a hand.

She made the mistake of looking back first.

The creatures poured out of the doors, too many of them, climbing over each other in a tide of flesh. Patches of clothing still stuck to arms and legs and torsos, torn at the joints where they had been reattached. The longer she looked, the more she could see the men and women who had once been.

Then the shuttle's gun started firing, ripping them apart like wheat before a scythe. The thundering sound brought her back from the brink, and she turned and leapt into the shuttle.

Shepard didn't even have to shout the order. Cortez was already pulling away, gunning the thrusters as hard as he could. Garrus helped her up and into a seat while Vega stowed the turret as the passenger bay doors closed.

The brief bit of turbulence as they passed the detonation threshold wasn't the relief that Shepard thought it would be. There was acid roiling in her stomach, and she had to fight not to retch.


	12. Slipping

The moment the shuttle was docked, Shepard opened the passenger doors and burst out. Garrus followed as close as he could, and Vega disembarked a bit more wearily. The cargo bay was largely unoccupied, save for Sawyer and a handful of marines.

"Din!" she shouted as she marched for the elevators. "You have a firing solution on that installation?"

"Since the shuttle left the ship, Commander," he replied, his rumbling voice piped in through the intercom.

"Fire everything," she said, punching the call button hard. "I want to see glass, Din."

"With pleasure," Din said before the intercom cut out.

Garrus couldn't blame her. In fact, he agreed. There was no such thing as 'overkill' to a turian soldier. But she was visibly shaken, and he couldn't help but draw a little closer to her than he normally would.

He put a hand on her shoulder. "Shepard-"

She visibly startled at his touch, and he pulled away immediately. "I need to talk to Hackett," she said harshly. Then, more quietly, "Get everyone in the war room."

When the doors opened, Shepard stepped inside and pressed the panel immediately. The elevator slammed shut in his face. He blinked, mandibles clamped tight against his face, then pressed the call button with a sigh.

Garrus glanced back at the shuttle. Cortez was trying to talk to Vega and getting single word replies as he slowly took off his armor.

He wondered if he himself would be so affected, had it been turians he'd seen down there.

* * *

"That's not good enough, Admiral!"

"I know," Hackett almost barked, visibly frustrated as his holo-image shifted and flickered in the QEC. "I wish I had more to give you, but-"

"You're telling me you knew nothing about what was going on there?" Shepard was shouting, almost pacing from side to side, fists clenching at her sides. "Who told you about it? Who knew about that place?"

"You know I can't say."

"Then what can you say?"

"Commander!"

Shepard stilled and ground her teeth. Hackett glowered at her before he sighed and ran a hand over his scarred face.

"If I had known anything about what you were walking into, Shepard, I would have told you. But I didn't." His hand fell and he had a fury in his eyes she hadn't seen before. "But make no mistake, I'm as angry as you are. I've been doing some digging, and I can tell you two things: the person who originally authorized the construction of that facility is dead. He was on Arcturus Station when the Reapers hit. And second, that artifact you found was from within the system."

She blinked. "Within? Not on Theta?"

Hackett shook his head. "On the only other class-M world in the system. And they either didn't notice or didn't care about the small human colony on that planet."

Shepard looked at him in disbelief. "No."

He nodded grimly. "The Manswell expedition."

Launched in 2070. Private colonization effort by a reclusive billionaire. In cryo-freeze for almost a hundred years, forgotten and cut off from the galaxy for decades, only rediscovered by an asari survey team a year before the war broke out.

If the Reapers hadn't entered the system, they probably had no idea the war was even on once the comm buoys went down. But if the artifact was recovered from that planet...

Shepard clenched her jaw. "What are my orders, sir?"

"Survey Centauri Gamma. If you find anything else like what you found on Theta, do whatever you have to do to stop this threat from spreading." His mouth was a line as thin as the scar that crossed his face. "I'm not there, Shepard. I didn't see what you saw. This is your call."

She swallowed hard. "Understood, sir."

The admiral nodded slowly. "Hackett out."

He stepped back, and his image flickered and faded. Shepard was left alone in the QEC room, somehow exhausted despite the powerful thudding of her heart against her ribs.

* * *

Garrus had gathered the officers as instructed. They didn't have to wait long before the door to the comm room opened and Shepard emerged, looking haggard.

She stepped up to the central circular dais around which the rest of the officers stood, staring into the blue holo-emitters on the surface of it. Then she looked up.

"What do we know, Vorek?" she asked.

The batarian stepped forward and typed into his omni-tool. The artifact they'd seen on the station appeared above the central dais, large as life and recreated in minute detail. Garrus frowned, and in his periphery, he saw Vega flinch.

"This is not Reaper tech," Vorek declared as he dragged his hand across open space and slowly spun the hologram. "The Reapers may have been eons beyond us, but what they were was still recognizably synthetic – tubes, metal, circuitry and cybernetics, created with or bonded to an organic essence. They were a synthesis, a fusion. What they believed to be 'perfect.' "

"And?" Shepard asked impatiently. "What is this?"

Vorek blinked at her, then pressed another key on his omni-tool. The artifact seemed to shrink, grow smaller, then expand, extrapolating outward from where it looked to be broken near the tip. After it finished, Garrus thought it looked strangely familiar. Almost...

"Organic," Vorek said simply. "One hundred percent pure. What we are looking at is a fragment of something larger. Perhaps a bone, or a limb, or a finger. It's impossible to say with any certainty."

"So... you're saying this thing is alive?" Sawyer asked.

"Perhaps," Vorek said with a nod. "Perhaps not anymore. I doubt it has any sentience, at any rate. Whatever is left might operate purely on instinct, or simply produce the... effects you saw as a byproduct of its own existence."

"And what are these 'effects' exactly?" Din rumbled, crossing his arms over a thick chest.

Vorek frowned as he called up more data on his omni-tool. The hologram disappeared, and was replaced with three two-dimensional windows – the camera feeds from their omni-tools and Garrus' visor, running at double speed through the entire mission. Surrounding the windows were numerous datapoints, appearing and disappearing as the videos played.

"I was able to gather enough data to ascertain a few things. The most readily apparent being that this artifact has an area of influence, within which there is no biological entropy. Cells simply continue to exist, and depending on their proximity to the artifact, even regenerate, rendering organics functionally immortal.

"The second is that the artifact feeds off dark energy."

Shepard, who had been staring transfixed at the video playback, snapped her head to Vorek. "What?"

He nodded slowly. "Even left unattended, the eezo core of that base should have lasted years before starting to degrade. Yet when you arrived, it was nearly dead. The placement of the artifact is, according to the data I have, the only possible cause. It absorbs the dark energy generated by the mass effect, and would seem to increase its area of influence."

"Which would explain why the Reapers wouldn't want to go near it," Garrus said with a nod. "Everything about their technology is built around the mass effect."

Shepard's eyes widened. "The Thanix. When we fired at the base-"

"Thanix cannons fire iron, uranium, and tungsten accelerated to a fraction of the speed of light," Din interrupted. "Nothing but molten metal leaves the barrel."

"I have my doubts that either the bomb or the cannons destroyed the entirety of the artifact," Vorek said grimly, "considering what cursory data I have about its age. But at the very least, I would say it is dormant."

"So," Sorono chimed in, "problem solved, right? We can all go home now."

Everyone looked at Shepard, Garrus included. She sighed.

"They didn't find the artifact on Theta. They found it on Gamma."

Garrus blinked. "And?"

"And there's a human colony on Gamma."

The whole room went dead silent.

"We don't know if they've found another artifact," Kaidan ventured. "We don't even know if there's more than one."

"That's why we're going to find out," Shepard said. "Vorek, do these things emit anything that could be detected?"

He nodded. "It's more looking for an absence than a presence, but yes."

"Then if we find anything-"

"We level the planet from orbit."

Everyone turned to look at Din. His eyes were on Shepard.

"This is a threat that cannot be ignored. If we find another, we have to assume the colony has been compromised. Anything less is foolish."

Kaidan looked at him like he was crazy. "You can't possibly be suggesting-"

"A mercy killing." He shrugged. "Nothing more. Or would you wish them to suffer indefinitely?"

"We don't even know that they're..." Sawyer struggled to find the words. "That they've been... taken, by whatever this thing is!"

Din glowered at him. "Even if they haven't, they would be eventually. A quick death, painless, from orbit, would be preferable."

"Is that what you'd want?" Kaidan asked skeptically.

The krogan nodded solemnly. "Absolutely."

The table fell silent. Everyone looked at each other. Garrus glanced at Vega, who was deathly quiet and staring at the central dais, then at Shepard, who was doing the same.

"Commander?" he prompted.

She swallowed, throat bobbing visibly. "Dismissed."

They all slowly filed out of the war room. Kaidan lingered long enough to glance over his shoulder at Shepard, then left. Only Garrus remained, unmoving.

"You can't seriously be considering-"

"You saw what was down there!" she almost shouted into the hushed silence of the empty war room. "The Reapers wanted to harvest us, or wipe us out. That thing... it wouldn't let them die, Garrus!"

"So you're going to kill them before it gets a hold of them, is that it?"

She scowled and said nothing. Garrus clicked his teeth and took a step toward her.

"This isn't like you."

"What, killing a few to save many?" She scoffed angrily. "Sounds a lot like me."

"You don't kill civilians!"

"Really?" she looked at him disbelievingly. "And those three hundred thousand batarians were what? Soldiers and slavers?"

He lost his voice for a moment. "That wasn't-"

"The last census put the Manswell colony at six hundred. Six hundred, Garrus! To save millions more!" She started to march away, heading for the door. "What's more blood on my hands, anyway?"

"You're slipping, Shepard."

She froze at the door, hand over the panel. Then she punched it and stormed out, not looking back.

Garrus slumped against the dais, the looming form of Centauri Gamma behind him.

"I'm just trying to catch you."

* * *

Shepard felt like she was going to be sick. The headache didn't help any. She turned off all the lights and pressed her head against the cold glass of the starboard lounge's observation window.

She should talk to him. She knew that. But what good would it do? He was too stubborn, he wouldn't listen. And she couldn't bear to hear him try and talk her out of it.

It has to be done, she thought. It has to. To keep them all safe.

She stared out at the stars and wondered which one was Bahak.

The door hissed open behind her, light from the crew deck pouring into the darkened lounge. She stiffened, but didn't turn. She could see well enough in the reflection of the glass.

"What do you want, Kaidan?" she asked wearily as the door closed behind him. "Shouldn't you be planning a mutiny right now?"

"What?" he said, brow furrowed.

"After that briefing, I figured you'd be the first person to turn on me."

Kaidan pointedly ignored that comment. "I just wanted to see if you were alright."

She smiled humorlessly and closed her eyes again. "Why wouldn't I be?"

It's not like she'd seen some of the most horrific things in her life today. It's not like she was being forced to soak her hands in innocent blood. It's not like Garrus had turned his back on her.

No. That wasn't right. She'd turned her back on him.

She sucked in a breath and winced. Her headache was getting worse.

Shepard felt a hand on her shoulder and spun, smacking it to the side. Kaidan backed away, hands up and palms out.

"What are you doing here?" she said harshly.

"I told you," Kaidan replied in that too-quiet tone of voice he always used when he was trying to calm her down. "I wanted to see-"

"You know what I mean." One of Shepard's hands curled into a fist. "You're here because of me, aren't you."

He blinked. "Is that what you think?"

"You going to tell me it's not true?" She turned her back on him and paced across the room. "Which is it, Kaidan? Are you here to watch me, make sure I don't go AWOL again? Track down the remnants of Cerberus and take the Illusive Man's place? Or do you just want to fuck me?"

"What?"

The disbelief in his voice only made her angrier. Shepard spun and fixed him with a withering glare.

"Who do you report to?" she barked. "The Alliance or the Council?"

"Neither!" he insisted loudly, stepping forward. "I'm here because you asked me to be here."

"Really?" Shepard barked out a laugh. "Oh yeah, I'm sure there wasn't another thought in that pretty little head of yours."

"And what is that supposed to mean?" he said, verging on anger.

"It means either you're either here for them, or you're here for yourself. And if that's it, then I know the reason why." Shepard paced around the couch, heading for the door. "And so does Garrus."

Kaidan went around the opposite end. The look of betrayal on his face reminded her of Horizon. "You really think I'm that kind of man, Shepard?"

"I don't know what kind of man you are, Alenko. I stopped knowing right about the time you pointed a gun at my head." Shepard jabbed a finger at him. "And I don't care what you think, on this ship, I'm in command and you will fall in line."

"Shepard-"

"What is wrong with you people?" she demanded, shaking her head. "I'm trying to keep you safe, don't you understand? That's all I'm doing! If this is what it takes, then so be it! I'll-"

A sharp pain stabbed through her skull and she staggered sideways, supporting herself against the couch. It felt like someone stuck a knife in her temple. She ground her teeth and dug the heel of her palm into her eye. She felt Kaidan move to her side, his hands near her arm, but he didn't touch her.

"I'll live with it," she finished quietly as the pain began to recede.

Kaidan swallowed. This close, she heard it clearly over the blood rushing through her ears. "Shepard... maybe you should get some sleep."

She didn't answer, didn't even look at him. She simply opened her eyes and marched out the door, feeling markedly worse than before.

She needed to lie down. Badly.


	13. Face the Truth

Garrus didn't go up to her cabin at shift change. It didn't feel right.

He tried to sleep in his own bed before giving up that fruitless endeavor and heading down to the cargo bay. Normally, he'd calibrate the guns, but they weren't his anymore and he wasn't about to touch another man's work without his permission, let alone a krogan's. That left one other option.

Vega had been kind enough to leave his heavy bag near his old workstation in the armory. Garrus stripped down to his waist, rolled his neck, and started laying into it. His inside game had never been his best, so that's where he'd start – he stood inches from the bag and hooked sharp punches and body blows into the reinforced leather.

For a while, the only sounds he heard were the thudding of his fists and the gentle hum of the engines. He was just starting to work up a sweat, his plates radiating excess body heat, when the elevator doors opened.

Part of him hoped it was Shepard. Another part of him hoped it was Sartorus – he could use a sparring partner right now. Hell, part of him even hoped it was Vega, ready to start another pissing contest.

None of him hoped it was Kaidan Alenko. So of course that's who it was.

"Garrus?"

He kept the frustration in his voice down in his subvocals, where Kaidan couldn't hear it. "What is it, Major?"

A few more solid punches, uppercuts aimed for the livers.

"Do you have a moment?" Kaidan asked stiffly.

"Depends," Garrus said conversationally in between volleys. "Is it important?"

"Important enough."

He stopped and let his arms hang easy at his sides, rolling his shoulders. He turned and found Kaidan halfway between him and the elevator, hands on his hips.

"Well?" Garrus prompted.

"Why do you think I'm here, Garrus?"

"I don't know. You refuse to say."

"I mean on this ship."

Garrus chuckled and shook his head, reaching for the stiff canvas towel he'd brought with him. "I know exactly why you're here."

"Really?" Kaidan said with a frown. "Because I'm starting to think no one does."

"We're not doing this, Alenko," Garrus said with finality as he dabbed the sweat from his face and neck.

"Why? What are you afraid of?"

Garrus froze. The hand holding the towel fell to his side and he turned to face Kaidan fully. "Afraid?" he said, not caring what his vocals or subvocals were communicating. "I've never been afraid of you."

"Then what the hell is this?" Kaidan said, throwing his arms out. "You haven't said a word to me since I stepped on board."

"I haven't needed to."

"We used to be friends, Garrus."

"Used to," Garrus emphasized. "Used to, Alenko. Shepard may have forgiven you, but that doesn't mean I have."

"What did I do to you?"

"You hurt her!" he said, stepping forward. Kaidan, to his credit, didn't flinch. He didn't even blink. "You walked away when she needed you most, treated her with mistrust and suspicion, and closed it all out by pointing a gun at her. That's what you did, and don't think for one second that I've forgotten."

Kaidan shook his head slowly. "I still don't understand how you could let her walk back into your life-"

Garrus rolled his eyes and started to walk away. "Oh please."

"-with Cerberus men and women beside her-"

"Yes, it was just _so hard_-"

"-and not have a single doubt!"

"Maybe I knew her better than you," Garrus said, half-turned to face him.

"Maybe you wanted her to be alive so badly that you didn't care," Kaidan countered.

"And maybe you wanted her to stay dead so you could move on."

Kaidan visibly flinched, and his hands flexed into fists, sheathed in biotic blue. Garrus was goading him deliberately. He was spoiling for a fight right now and whatever else he told himself, deep down, he'd always wanted to deck Alenko something fierce.

But there was no fight. Kaidan took a step back and uncurled his hands, taking a deep breath through his mouth. The faint blue light that had been traveling up his arms dissipated quickly.

"I fucked up," he said, keeping his eyes fixed on Garrus'. "I walked away when maybe I shouldn't have. And then I pushed her away when I _know_ I shouldn't have. And I have to live with that. Seeing her with you when maybe it should have been me.

"But don't you ever-" His eyes flared, blue flickering briefly in the corneas. "-_ever_ say that I wanted her dead."

Garrus wanted to say it again. Even if he lost the resulting fight, he'd be satisfied. But he just couldn't do it. The anger was there, but the hurt was just as clear. Kaidan had already lost, and Garrus was taunting him.

_You're a better man than that,_ he heard his father say.

"That was low," he said, eyes falling to the deck beneath Kaidan's feet as he shifted his weight. "I didn't mean that."

Kaidan took a breath and crossed his arms. "I hope not."

Garrus scratched at his tattoos and met his eyes again. "Still think you're an ass."

The major shrugged. "Well, the feeling's mutual."

"Why _are_ you on this ship?" he asked with a tilt of his head.

Now it was Kaidan's turn to roll his eyes. "If you were in my place, where would you be?"

His mandibles twitched. He had him there.

"I won't walk away again," Kaidan said sternly. "For as long as she needs me, I'm here. You'll just have to learn to live with that."

Garrus stepped forward, slowly, to within arm's reach. He hesitated, then extended a hand. Kaidan regarded it for a moment, then, almost as hesitantly, shook it.

"I can learn."

* * *

Garrus paused before he stepped out of the elevator, fiddling with a fastener on his civvies. It was late, but she'd probably still be up. She'd had a few hours to cool down, and he needed to speak with her. As her XO or just Garrus, he didn't care which.

Miranda's warning kept playing over and over again in his head. Don't give ground easily, but give it. When she pushes, don't be afraid to pull back.

And he would. In his heart, he knew that. He'd followed her, admired her, supported her for too long to do anything but go straight down into hell with her. But before he did, he'd do his damnedest to make her see reason. She'd done the same for him, once.

He hesitated a bit longer in front of her door, then pressed a finger to the panel.

It blinked red.

He tried again. Red.

Then he tried the door chime. Nothing. Again. Nothing.

Shepard never locked her door. And she always answered the chime.

"Shepard?" he called.

No answer.

He was starting to get worried.

"Shepard, I'm coming in."

He brought up his omni-tool and ran his breaching program. It took longer than it should have – Shepard had actually encrypted the door lock. Very badly, since she'd never had a mind for tech, but she'd done it.

Now seriously concerned, Garrus stepped in as the door opened. He nearly fell over the chairs stacked in front of him. Her two desk chairs and the rather large one from down in her sitting area, plus the table stacked on top of them.

He was halfway over the makeshift barricade when a shot hissed by his ear. He dove for cover behind her desk.

"Shepard!" he shouted. "What the-"

"Stay back!" Shepard's voice, on the verge of hysterics. "Don't come any closer, you hear me?!"

"Shepard, it's me!"

"Shut up!"

Another shot, straight through her glass case of model ships, shattering the bulk of the quarian cruiser _Qwib'Qwib_ into tiny pieces of plastic shrapnel. He risked a peek through the glass, and saw her crouched behind her couch that she'd moved into the corner.

She fired again and it went wide, which was strange all by itself. Shepard was a better shot than this.

"Get away!" she screamed. "Get out!"

Garrus realized he had been in one too many situations like this in his life when he began working through possible negotiation tactics in his mind. Since she seemed half-crazed, he settled on 'comforting.'

"Shepard," he said, trying desperately to keep his subvocals soothing. "It's Garrus."

A long silence. He waited with his heart in his throat. If she couldn't recognize him, if he couldn't talk her down...

"Garrus?"

He expelled a breath. "Yeah," he said slowly. "It's me. I just came to see if you were okay."

A noise and a clatter meant she was climbing over the sofa. Her footsteps moved quickly, and while she made her way across the room Garrus had a matter of seconds to decide whether or not to try and take her down.

He decided against it. Shepard rounded the corner, still in her sleep clothes, gun in her hand. She ran up to him and grabbed him by the wrist, dragging him towards the couch.

"What are you doing?" she hissed at him without looking. "You're too exposed!"

"Exposed to what?" he said, resisting just enough to slow her down and make her turn.

"They're all around us, Garrus." She stepped close and pressed her hands into his shoulders. He was very conscious of the gun's weight. "We can't trust anyone. You understand?"

Shepard's eyes were glazed and darting back and forth, tiny flickers from side to side. Like she couldn't focus on anything, couldn't really see him.

"I don't, Shepard."

She shook her head and turned, dragging him by the hand again. "We have to stay here. I've got this gun. We'll be alright."

He tried another tack. "We can't stay here forever."

She froze. Her head turned slowly. "You're right." Shepard turned and marched for the door, almost tripping on the stairs. She started to move the chairs. "We have to get out of here. We have to get to a shuttle."

Garrus approached behind her, slowly. "Shepard-"

"We have to get out." She tossed one desk chair aside, then the other. "We have to find somewhere else. Somewhere safe."

This was bad. She was sleepwalking, or dreaming, or something. He had to stop her. And right now, the only option he could think of was one he didn't relish.

Shepard was trying to pick up the large easy chair with one hand, refusing to let go of her gun. "Garrus, help me with-"

He yanked her shoulder, spun her to face him, then punched her full on the jaw. The gun flew from her hand and Shepard crumpled to the ground, down, but not out.

Garrus stood above her and waited. Slowly, she pushed herself up on one elbow, blinking rapidly. She touched the inside of her mouth and her fingers came away red. She looked around, then up at Garrus.

"Garrus," she asked quietly, "why am I on the floor?"

He immediately fell to one knee and reached out, hands hovering over her. "I'm sorry, I just, I couldn't think of another way-"

"What happened?" she asked quickly. "Was I asleep?"

"I don't know, I came up to talk and you had the gun and-"

"Gun?" She glanced around, locating the pistol which had fallen by one of her chairs. "Oh, Jesus."

The door to her quarters hissed open. Kaidan and Sawyer stood on the other side.

"EDI said there was gunfire in the Commander's quarters," Sawyer said quickly, stepping inside. His eyes quickly found the neat little hole in her model case. "What happened?"

"We don't know," Garrus said. "She was out of it, acting crazy. It must have something to do with-"

"The artifact," Shepard finished. Her eyes widened. "Vega."

She jumped to her feet and rushed for the elevator. The rest of them followed.

* * *

Vega had barricaded himself in his quarters in much the same way Shepard had. The only difference was he didn't have a gun, only a large, old looking bowie knife.

Shepard's strategy for dealing with him had been similar to Garrus' – get him to recognize a voice he trusted, then get close enough to give him a solid right hook. They dragged him off to the medbay, and while Chakwas was looking them both over, Vorek stormed in.

"I've just heard," he said breathlessly. "Your AI informed me. Tell me what happened. In detail."

Garrus stood next to Shepard's bed – Chakwas was in the middle of examining her eyes. "She'd locked the door, encrypted it, barricaded it, and holed up in a corner with a pistol."

"What did she say? Anything?"

"Something about how they were all around us," Garrus said, shaking his head. "That we needed to stay where it was safe."

"She recognized you?"

"Not immediately."

Vorek turned. "And you don't remember any of this?"

Shepard grimaced. "None."

The batarian turned and paced, his four eyes staring at nothing. "Was there anything else? Anything at all?"

Garrus blinked. "Her eyes. They were... twitching."

"Nystagmus," Chakwas said, pulling away from Shepard and pocketing the device she'd been peering through at her eyes. "It's not uncommon. Though I've never seen a case cured by a solid punch before."

Vorek turned and stared at Shepard. "And do you feel anything now? Anything out of the ordinary?"

She shook her head. Vorek started pacing again.

"It's not a disease, not that we can detect, the decontamination screen would have found it. It's not a direct connection, because it was too slow to form. The only possibility I can think of is a memetic."

"Memetic?" Kaidan asked.

Vorek nodded. "A memetic virus. Like a subliminal message. Communicated through audio or visual cues too subtle to be noticed, but with a profound psychological effect."

"The artifact did this?" Garrus asked. "That was hours ago."

"Memetics can be slow to form, lingering in the back of the mind until they become cohesive thoughts."

"Like the incubation of a virus," Chakwas said.

Vorek nodded, almost smiling at her. "Exactly."

"But it's all purely theoretical," she continued. "There hasn't been a true memetic virus ever developed or encountered, anywhere."

"There was some debate about the nature of indoctrination on Khar'shan, that it might have been a kind of memetic, but it was never proven." Vorek ran a hand over his mouth and along his jaw. "If the Commander was asleep... REM sleep accelerating the incubation would make sense, considering how the brain organizes thoughts-"

"Vorek."

He turned. Shepard frowned.

"What do we do to stop it?"

He shook his head. "You already have. Memetics are, or at least presumed to be, very fragile things. If you feel nothing now, no stress or lingering paranoia, then it has passed."

Shepard took a moment to take account of herself. She felt better than she had earlier. Steadier. And the headache was gone, although she had a stiff pain in her jaw. Garrus had a meaner punch than she'd given him credit for. Eventually, she nodded, and Vorek almost smiled again.

"I would advise anyone who was in prolonged contact with either of you to report to the medbay for monitoring," Chakwas said from over the other bed as she examined the eyes of an unconscious James Vega.

"A virus spreads," Shepard noted grimly. "Of course."

"What about me?" Garrus said, furrowing his browplates. "Why wasn't I affected?"

Vorek scratched his chin, peering at him with all four eyes. "If I had to speculate, I'd say it was because the artifact you came into contact with only had prior experience with humans. It had no reference or context for a turian mind."

There was a silence. Shepard pushed herself off the bed.

"We need to get to that colony." She looked at Garrus. "Have the briefing room full in ten."

He nodded and moved for the door. "On it."

After he left, she gave him a few seconds to get to the elevator, then turned to Kaidan.

"Kaidan? A word."

Shepard crossed her arms and did her best to carry an air of authority despite her general state of undress. She led the way out of the medbay into the empty crew deck, then closed the door behind them.

"I wanted to apologize for what I said earlier," she said quietly, not quite meeting his eyes.

Kaidan shook his head, hand rising to briefly touch her arm. "You weren't thinking clearly."

"No, but..." Shepard took a hard breath. "Just because I wasn't thinking clearly doesn't mean I wasn't thinking."

He opened his mouth, but Shepard finally met his eyes and whatever he was about to say died in his throat. He let her speak.

"I was nervous about you being here. I admit that. Maybe I wasn't honest with myself as to why, I don't know, but you deserve better than that." She hesitated. "So if you're not comfortable being here-"

"No," he said immediately. "I'm not leaving. Not unless you want me to."

Shepard opened her mouth and this time it was Kaidan's turn to silence her with a look.

"I told you if we made it through the war there were things I wanted to say," he said firmly, "and I've taken my sweet time, but here it is: yeah, I care about you. I can't help that. But it won't compromise my duty or your relationship with Garrus. I won't let it. Ever."

He sighed and looked away, and for once, Shepard couldn't get a read on his eyes.

"Maybe if things had been different, we would have worked out. Maybe not. It doesn't matter. What matters is right now, and I'm not going to compromise who I am to try and chase after something that's long gone." His gaze met hers, intense but not overbearing. "I'm the one who should be apologizing. For not telling you this sooner. And just... hoping things got comfortable on their own."

Shepard didn't look away, but she took a moment to steady herself. She was glad at least one of them had the balls to finally address the elephant in the room.

"If I say 'apology accepted,' will you say the same and this conversation can be over?" she asked dryly.

He huffed and the corner of his mouth twitched up. "Whatever you say, Commander."

"Then apology accepted."

"Likewise."

Shepard paused, then stepped forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"You're a good man, Kaidan Alenko," she said softly. "No matter what I say."

He smiled a little. "Means a lot."

* * *

Ten minutes later, the briefing room was full. Shepard had changed into her uniform and stood at the head of the table. Vorek explained, as briefly as he could, what had transpired aboard the ship in the last half-hour. Sorono looked as lethargic as ever, Sawyer and Kaidan looked haggard, but wide awake, and Din's eyes were a bit less piercing. Vega had a nice bruise on his cheek, and looked profoundly embarrassed about it.

Garrus shifted next to her. If it hadn't been for him, she might have killed someone before they brought her out of it. If they brought her out of it.

She shook her head. Don't think about that. Think about now. The mission.

"Commander?"

Shepard looked up. They were all looking to her expectantly.

"We're going down there."

Din shook his head. "Stupid."

Shepard frowned. "I don't want to hear it, Din."

"This virus is an even greater threat."

"Do you want me to call you a coward?" she said, raising her voice.

Din's eyes widened and he uncrossed his arms. "No," he growled.

She gave him the same glare she used to give Grunt. "Then stop acting like one."

The krogan's hands clenched into fists. Vorek and Sawyer took a step back. Kaidan shifted his weight slightly, as did Garrus and Vega. The only people who didn't move were Shepard and Sorono, though he took the opportunity to stow his cigarette in a small tube and hook it onto his belt.

Din took a long, deep breath, then settled. His eyes lowered and he crossed his arms again. "I am not a coward," he said, "but that does not mean I am a fool."

"Neither am I." Shepard turned to the rest of them. "This is a dangerous situation, I know. We don't know exactly what we're going to walk into. But I also know you're up to the challenge. None of you would be here if you weren't."

She turned. "Sorono, how long would it take you to build a bomb with what we have on board?"

He blinked. "Depends on what kind you're looking for."

"Something big. Maybe something that exclusively kills organic life."

Sorono scratched at the orange marking on his chin, staring at nothing. Eventually, he nodded. "Give me an hour or two. I'll have something big for you."

She nodded. "Kaidan, Sawyer, I want you with me. Vega, I want you and two marines of your choosing to carry that bomb with us. Whatever happens, that's the priority."

"We're assuming we'll find another artifact down there?" Kaidan asked.

Shepard grimaced. "We're assuming the worst."

"And yet..." Din mumbled from across the table.

She frowned. "Din, have the guns ready. In case things go south."

He nodded and said nothing more. Shepard turned to Vorek.

"Can you provide us with anything that might block the memetic?" she asked.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, eyes flickering across the table. "If it's anything like indoctrination, then no. There's little I can do."

"What if it isn't?"

He pursed his lips. "If it uses more conventional methods, then some low level white noise piped into your subcomms would protect against any aural signals. For visual, just don't look directly at it for too long. If it's electrochemical or psionic in nature..." He shook his head. "Don't linger."

Shepard nodded grimly. Then she stepped away from the edge of the table. "Soon as Sorono finishes the bomb, we move out. I want everyone ready within the hour. Dismissed."

They filed out quickly, to attend to their duties or head for the armory. Garrus stayed behind, staring at her.

"I'm coming with you," he said.

Shepard shook her head. "No."

He bristled, a little. "If you think that-"

"No, Garrus," she said firmly, stepping close to him. He opened his mouth, but went silent as she rested her hand on his cheek, thumb brushing against his blue colony markings. "You think I don't want you there? I'm scared shitless, Garrus. Nothing I'd want more than to know you were behind me."

Garrus' mandibles fluttered. Shepard swallowed.

"But if something happens to me-"

He closed his eyes. "Shepard-"

"If something happens," she continued harshly, "fire the Thanix until there's nothing left. Deploy a beacon so no one ever comes back here, and go."

She squeezed, fingers wrapping around his mandible. "I need to know that you'll keep them safe."

He raised a hand and pressed it against hers. Then he bowed his head, and she met it with her own.

"I will."

Shepard breathed him in one last time, smoke and metal and something undefinable. Then she pulled away, heading for the armory.

She couldn't look back.


	14. Broken Heart

The shuttle was a bit more cramped than usual. Six soldiers plus a rather large bomb Sorono had thrown together with some parts from the single Cain they'd been able to requisition and a spare drive core for the shuttle.

They descended on the tiny colony, a collection of houses of various shape and sizes, mostly old prefabs developed in the twenty-first century, but a few more modern ones were scattered around the edge of the settlement. The town itself was spread out over a wide area of plains, but the center square was fairly built up, and that was where they were going.

"Take us over once before you land, Steve," Shepard said gently. "We want them to notice us."

"Aye aye, ma'am," Cortez replied, guiding the shuttle slowly over the small crowd that had already begun to form, making an unnecessarily wide turn before setting her down directly in the center of the small town square.

"Vega, stay here." She forced a grin. "You and your bomb are intimidating."

He was too tense to laugh, but tried his best. "Sure are, Lola."

After the passenger bay doors opened fully, Shepard slowly climbed out. Men, women, and children, most wearing clothes that had been fashionable over a hundred years ago, gathered around the edge of the town square. They murmured between themselves as Kaidan and Sawyer stepped out behind her.

She stood stock still and waited. Eventually, an older man, middle aged and balding, worked his way through the crowd and stepped forward. He kept his chin up and peered at her through a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

"Alliance?" he asked.

She nodded. "Commander Shepard, SSV _Normandy_."

He seemed to relax a little, adjusting his glasses. "Been a while since we've had Alliance visitors. And there hasn't been any comm traffic in almost a year. Thought you might have forgotten about us again."

"There was a war," she said curtly. "Long story."

His eyebrows shot up. "Did we win?"

She nodded and smiled, a bit grimly. "We won."

The man blinked, then smiled a little. "Well. That's good."

Shepard let the smile fall from her face. "We're actually here on business, Mr...?"

"Alderman," he said, clasping his hands together. "Ironic, I know."

She furrowed her brow and was about to ask what he meant by that, but thought better of it and shook her head. "Have there been any... disturbances, lately?"

"Disturbances?" he asked. "What kind of disturbances?"

"I mean..." Now that she was here, she really didn't know to explain this quickly. "Has anyone found anything? Anything strange? Or started acting strange?"

He stared at her. "No. Nothing like that."

She started to relax, hope against hope that they hadn't found anything. "No disappearances?"

Alderman blinked. "Actually, we haven't heard from a group of settlers in a few days now. We have short range comms, but they haven't checked in."

Her heart sank into her stomach. "Settlers?"

"Yes, a whole group volunteered to head north almost a month ago, search for a way to expand the colony, maybe find more fertile farmland."

"How many?"

He pondered for a moment, pursing his lips. "Sixty or seventy."

A muscle in her jaw jumped. "Seventy people?"

Alderman shook his head. "Seventy families, Commander."

* * *

The shuttle sped over the massive trees. Shepard sat in the rear, elbows on her knees and hands clasped together, bouncing her foot anxiously. Sawyer was checking and rechecking his armor seals, Vega was slapping heat sinks to the belt of his hardsuit, and Kaidan was calibrating his omni-tool for the third time that day.

Seventy families. Children.

She shook her head. Don't think. Just work. Keep it together.

"Commander?" Cortez piped up from the cockpit. "You'll want to see this."

Shepard jumped up and ran into the cockpit. Cortez had pulled up one of the exterior cameras on a separate screen, expanding the image.

There was debris scattered all around. Supplies, crates abandoned or broken into, tools staked into the ground, small personal vehicles overturned and wrecked. It looked like it had been a camp once.

"It looks like there's a trail of it that leads northwest," Cortez said, expanding another screen showing a map. "Into this small mountain range."

"Can you find where it leads?" she asked.

"Already scanning," he said.

Shepard steadied herself against the back of Cortez's seat as the shuttle shifted in the air, heading northwest. The lieutenant's eyes flicked across his console.

"Far as I can tell, there's a trail of the same kind of metal leading this way-" He brought up a map and drew a line around two of the smaller mountains and toward a larger one, adjacent to a canyon. "-and ending here."

"Then take us in, Cortez," she said grimly. "Right on top of where it ends."

* * *

The trail ended at a cave.

The air inside was hot and stale. As they moved deeper, it only got worse. Shepard had to fight to keep her breathing steady. Kaidan and Sawyer stuck close behind her, while the two marines carrying the bomb followed further behind, and Vega brought up the rear, keeping an eye behind.

The passage stretched to several meters wide, then contracted down to a small crevice that they had to widen carefully with kinetic drills on their omni-tools before the bomb could fit through. There were other paths, large and small, branching off at fairly regular intervals, but they kept going forward, keeping to the one path they knew had a decent chance of leading where they wanted to go.

It was so dark that the lights from their hardsuit flashlights pierced the black like tunnels of light, illuminating only thin strips of the environment around them. A few chambers were large enough that they needed to coordinate their lights to get a sense of the size, but none contained anything more than lichen and the occasional bioluminescent fungi.

At one point midway through their trek, Kaidan grabbed her shoulder. "Did you feel that?" he asked.

She shook her head. Everyone went still for a long moment, listening intently. There was only the crushing silence of the mountain bearing down on them.

Kaidan removed his hand and shook his shoulders. "Sorry. Just jumpy I guess."

"Understandable," Shepard said, taking point and marching forward again.

They descended deeper, no one saying a word, until Shepard felt... something. She froze and everyone behind her did the same.

"Tell me you felt that," Kaidan said quietly.

"What was it?"

"Tremor, maybe?" Sawyer asked.

She shook her head. "Region's seismologically dead. There shouldn't be any tremors."

"Well, it wasn't just a stiff breeze," Vega drawled behind them.

Shepard shifted her shoulders, eager to draw her rifle, for all the good it would do. "We should keep moving."

The tremors, or pulses, or whatever they were only got worse as they descended deeper into the cavern. Gradually increasing in intensity until they were just strong enough to knock loose dust from the ceiling. They were on regular intervals, she realized, but minutes apart. She couldn't figure what the source could be, since none of the colonists had any mining equipment.

When she stepped out into a chamber more massive than any they had seen before, Shepard got her answer.

The floor looked bare and relatively smooth, with no stalagmites to speak of. Their lights could barely reach the other side, but they revealed another passage as big as the one Shepard had just emerged from, and still more besides, at regular intervals along the wall of the strangely circular cave.

"Think this is as good as we're going to get, Shepard," Kaidan said, looking around. "We plant the bomb here, it should level the whole mountain."

She nodded. "Yeah, alright. Vega, set it up and we'll-"

Another tremor interrupted her, the strongest yet, and this time accompanied by a sound – a low, deep, resounding thud from somewhere above them.

Shepard looked up, as did the rest of her squad. Their flashlights combined were enough to give a rough picture of the entirety of the thing.

It was hundred times the size of the artifact in the research installation. It hung above them, suspended in the air, anchored to the ceiling of the chamber. Or embedded, as though the mountain had formed around it. It was a shiny ebony and covered in the same sharply reflective patterns of wear, but it was broken and cracked in places, revealing a dull and brownish-red interior. As they slowly traced their lights over it, they came to the center, where the black shell was almost entirely absent, revealing a giant bulbous mass which stretched with something like tendons and muscles. It moved and flexed, very slowly, its bulk shifting and pulsing, sending ripples into the black shell surrounding it.

"Oh god," Kaidan said from somewhere to her left. "What is it?"

"It's a heart." Sawyer's voice, sounding shell-shocked. "It's a giant god damn heart."

Shepard found her voice. "Plant the bomb. We need to go."

The two marines dropped the circular core on the floor, the sound echoing across the chamber, and Kaidan tore his attention away from the thing looming above them and went to arm the bomb.

He was halfway done when all hell broke loose.

The ground seemed to pitch beneath her and she fell to her knees. She knew this song and dance, and fought not to close her eyes, but something in the back of her mind seemed to pinch and she almost passed out.

As she closed her eyes, she saw them die. Sixty or seventy families, tearing each other apart and piecing themselves back together again beneath a monstrous heart that drove them further into madness with every beat. And in that heart, for just one moment, she saw the goal, the motivation, the instinct, the thing that it had once in life embodied and even in death could not be sated.

Communion.

Glorious, everlasting communion.

Shepard's eyes flew open and she gasped for breath, then struck herself full on the face with her fist. Her nose started bleeding, and the pain brought her back to reality long enough to pull her weapon and take a single shot at Kaidan.

The shot glanced harmlessly off his shields, but the sound of gunfire was enough to snap him out of his trance. He shook his head hard, and quelled the biotics that had been flaring and rippling wildly up and down his body. Then, with some difficulty, he rose and drew his gun, taking his own shots at the two marines while Shepard fired at Vega and Sawyer.

After a few moments, they were all lucid enough to know that they needed to get the hell out. Kaidan tried to arm the bomb, but the heart above them beat once again and they all nearly crumpled to the floor.

The screaming started, somewhere distant.

Shepard pulled Kaidan away from the bomb just as he armed the timer, heading back towards the way they came.

"Fifteen minutes," he said breathlessly beside her as they clambered gradually upward. "Five miles safe distance."

"Move!" Shepard shouted.

They were halfway to the entrance, at least she thought they were, when the colonists started to pour out of the walls around them. From tiny crevices they hadn't even noticed, to full paths that they had ignored, they rose screaming and wailing, the same as before – too many limbs bending the wrong way, tangles of flesh and bone, warped and twisted.

Shepard drew her Carnifex and despite the knives slicing into her mind, her aim was true more often than not. But it mattered little – shots just spilled blood and slowed them down. Any severed limbs, or the loss of a head, and the still flailing and screaming corpse was dragged back by more shrieking colonists back in the direction of the beating heart.

She keyed her comm. "Cortez! Cortez, do you read?!"

"-in, I - st-"

"Cortez!"

"- a- -ver -ey're e-rywher- - –ve to t-e off-"

The interference was much stronger this time, warbling and pitching until she could barely hear him. But she got enough to know that there were hostiles outside, and extraction might not be possible.

Vega led the charge out the entrance of the cave, blasting away with his Scimitar, flanked by his marine detail. Kaidan was next, using his biotics to fling whole groups of the taken colonists off the cliff and down into the forest canopy beneath them. Shepard burst out from the underground and Sawyer stuck close, drawing his rifle as soon as he got outside, firing quick and precise bursts.

She saw Cortez's shuttle hovering above them, several colonists hanging off the sides and trying to claw their way in with their spare arms, while still more literally piled beneath the shuttle, climbing atop one another in an effort to reach it.

She unhooked her Revenant from her hardsuit and held down the trigger until the gun vented steam, then she swapped in a new heat sink and did it again. The gun tore limbs from bodies and put holes the size of a fist in anything it hit, but they still kept coming, crawling after them while others picked them up or dragged them back into the mountain.

Her hand flew to her ear, aiming the Revenant and firing single shots with the other. "Cortez, do you read?!"

"- read you -"

"Get clear! We'll fight our way through and get to a safe distance!"

"- can't open the – turret -"

"Forget the turret! Just go!"

"- Shepard -"

"GO!"

The shuttle hung in the air, spun, then took off to the south, several bodies still clinging to the outside somehow.

"There goes our ride," Vega shouted over the din of screams and gunfire. "You got a plan now, Lola?"

A taken colonist got close, and Shepard bludgeoned the thing with her rifle until Kaidan shoved it away with a flare of biotics.

"Shoot our way through and run until we can't run anymore!" she shouted.

"Sounds good to me!" Vega charged forward, pausing only to swap in a new heat sink, then kept firing, trying to clear a path.

Shepard called for Kaidan, but he was already moving. He ran forward, threw out his arms, and biotic blue flared outward in a shockwave, knocking colonists left and right.

"Forward!" she shouted, and they ran.

It was a rough descent down the side of the mountain. There was no real path except what had been formed by rain and erosion; irregular gashes in the landscape with uncertain footing. The things were on their heels at every step, leaping down from higher ledges. They didn't tire, didn't let up for a second as Shepard and her team descended the gradual slope of the small mountain.

They got down into the trees soon enough, which provided its own obstacles. Spines extended from the alien bark. Long slim limbs held them back and slapped them in the face, scoring their skin and armor as they caught and tripped on deadfall.

Shepard led the way, though she didn't know where, beyond the vague idea of a clearing she thought she saw on the shuttle ride in. Sharp branches and softer ferns crunched under her boots as she ran, heart thundering in her chest.

After so many close calls, it was hard to fear death. But what was promised here was far, far worse. And that fear, more than anything, kept her moving. Her only solace was that if they were taken, the bomb would still destroy the heart and spare her crew and the rest of these colonists their suffering.

Suddenly, Shepard burst through a stand of trees and found her clearing. And on the other side, a sheer drop of a hundred feet.

She glanced quickly from side to side. A rock formation on her left, blocking that route. More trees on her right, along the edge of the cliff. No quick way to descend, no way to climb, no one with a mass effect parachute... no way out.

Shepard turned as the rest of her squad entered the clearing, firing bursts at the taken she could see through the trees. As the rest of them took in the situation, they spun and started firing as well. There was little else to do.

She tried to comm Cortez again, but the interference was so heavy she couldn't hear a word. The taken were starting to move in, gradually encroaching on the clearing as wave after wave pushed forward from the mountain. They were trapped, and starting to run low on heat sinks.

"Where the hell's the damn shuttle!" Sawyer shouted, firing his Vindicator into the woods.

"He'll be here!" Vega shouted back. Then he glanced back at the cliff edge, at the orange sky of the coming dusk. "Don't make a liar out of me, Esteban!"

"Shepard," Kaidan said next to her, sounding like his voice was failing him. "I don't have a lot left."

"Then save it," she said, firing another burst. They were getting closer. "Only a few more minutes until the bomb goes off."

"We're not safe," he said, firing his pistol. "The blast wave."

"I know."

For a moment she turned to look at him. He looked exhausted, blown out, but as determined and stoic as ever.

"It's been an honor, Shepard," he said, and his eyes said more than that.

She couldn't speak. There wasn't enough time to find the words. She just ground her teeth and nodded and hoped that he understood.

They were backed up almost to the cliff's edge, down to their last heat sinks. Roughly three minutes left.

Suddenly, thunder filled the air and the ground shuddered, and the forest before them partially evaporated in a streak of blue light.

And the _Normandy_ swooped in on the echoes, passing overhead and angling its nose above them. The forward hatch opened, revealing the cargo bay, Cortez's shuttle in its docking cradle, and a whole line of marines with rifles drawn.

At their center was Garrus, his Widow in his hands, already sighting down the scope.

She didn't have time to think – she shoved Kaidan back and covered him as best she could with the last remaining shots in her Revenant. The ship lowered enough for him to make the leap to the open hatch. Vega sent his two marines back before he made the leap himself. Only Sawyer and Shepard were left.

Shepard's rifle vented one last time. Sawyer signaled for her to move as he swapped in his last sink. Unable to do anything else, she relented, and ran to the edge, making the jump with some difficulty. Garrus hauled her up onto the open hatch. They had a dozen guns easy, plus Sawyer's, all firing at the advancing line of the taken, and the shot from the Thanix cannon had carved a deep ditch in the forest which hampered their advance, but there were still so many of them and they just would not stop coming...

Sawyer turned and made for the cliff, and the moment he did, the taken all charged as one towards him. He jumped, and was caught in midair by two of them, a small thing that had once been a child and a larger, more massive creature that might have once been its parents. Sawyer clutched at the hatch and Shepard dove for him, grasping at his arm. He lost his grip and fell, and she just barely caught him, hanging beneath the ship.

The rest of the crew were occupied with the taken leaping for the hatch, trying to crawl in – Din was throwing them off with one hand and blasting away with a shotgun in the other, Kaidan was hanging on the arm of another marine and firing his pistol almost blindly, Sorono was slicing limbs off taken with twin omni-blades. Garrus was at her side, trying to pull her up, and having little success.

Sawyer looked up into her eyes. She screwed her eyes shut and screamed as she pulled as hard as she could, but he was too heavy, they were too heavy, she couldn't hang on-

He fell away from her. Time seemed to slow as she watched him plummet.

And then he was enveloped by blue light, halted in midair. With a mighty roar from her left, he flew upwards, above the edge of the hatch, and into Korbin Vorek's arms.

The taken clinging to Sawyer were quickly dispatched and thrown off the edge. Garrus shouted into his comm for Joker to go. Less than a minute later, they broke atmo.

Shepard collapsed onto the deck, staring at Vorek. He was bleeding freely from his nose and trying to stifle the flow.

"Biotic?" was all she had the capacity to ask.

He looked at her and nodded. "L2," he said.

She heard Kaidan start laughing off to her right. She just grinned and fell back onto the deck, sighing heavily.

She'd picked a good crew.


	15. Ever Onward

Shepard was only allowed to leave the medbay after Chakwas had a look at her, but she was more than willing to take a knee for once.

"Hegemony used L2 implants?" Kaidan asked sleepily from the bed as Chakwas injected something into the IV in his arm.

"The Hegemony never stopped using them," Vorek said with a scoff, holding a thick wet cloth to his nose. "Everyone with the potential gets the implant. A few side effects didn't concern them."

"Your dossier didn't mention that," Shepard noted.

Vorek turned to face her and she smiled to defuse whatever unpleasant thoughts he might have had. "Your people never asked, and... well, you learn not to volunteer too much information on Khar'shan."

"Uh, Doc?" Sawyer chirped from in the corner as one of the medtechs tended to a bite on his leg. "This... whatever they had, isn't contagious is it?"

Chakwas caught Vorek's gaze and rolled her eyes. He chuckled. It was the first time Shepard had ever heard him do anything of the sort. "You won't turn into one of them, if that's what you're asking, Sergeant."

"Oh good," Sawyer said, slumping back into his bed. "Think you can call me Will now."

"Think you can call anyone whatever you want," one of Vega's marines said, clapping Vorek on the shoulder. Shepard realized with some surprise that it was Edwards. "That was a hell of a thing you did."

"Damn right," said another, off by Kaidan's bed.

Vorek looked thoroughly flustered by all this attention, and Shepard couldn't help but grin.

"Looks like you're the hero of the hour, Vorek," she said. "They'll be wanting to buy you drinks as soon as you're out of here."

"Well he won't be out of here tonight," Chakwas said with finality as she began to apply the skinweave for Sawyer's leg. "A strain like that, I want to keep him for observation."

"I don't mind," Vorek said, checking the cloth under his nose to see if he'd staunched the flow. "You have a keen mind, doctor. And an amicable bedside manner."

Chakwas scoffed and smiled. "Flattery will get you nowhere, Korbin."

Shepard pushed off her bed and stage-whispered to Vorek, "Serrice Ice brandy in her desk," before she left.

Sawyer was in the middle of asking Vorek if his first name was really 'Korbin' when the medbay doors shut behind her. The crew deck was as noisy as the medbay. Vega had already been discharged, and was sitting on the mess hall table. He was in the middle of telling a smattering of the crew, including Cortez, Sorono, and Din, what had happened down on the planet.

"-and we just keep heading down, like we're going straight into the bottom of the mountain," he said. "Then we get to this cavern, the biggest one I've ever seen."

"How big?" Sorono asked. "Like, shuttle big, or frigate big?"

"Like small cruiser big," Vega said, stretching out his arms. "And this giant heart was hanging above us."

"Heart?" Din asked.

"Yeah, a giant beating heart. Creepiest thing you've ever seen in your life. Like, _da miedo_, you know?"

Din blinked slowly.

"I don't think he knows," Sorono said dryly, taking another drag.

"Look, the point is it was creepy. And we couldn't even look at it, and somehow that made it worse. And then those things started to show up, crawling everywhere-"

Shepard turned and headed for the elevator. She knew Vega wouldn't tell this one but once or twice. War stories were one thing, horror stories quite another.

For once, she was glad the elevator took its time. She had another few moments to come down from the adrenaline high and try to relax. Her first stop should be the comm room to contact Hackett, but there was one person she had to speak with first.

The elevator halted and the doors opened. Garrus was on the bridge, leaning on the railing and looking down at the galaxy map. Shepard stepped up alongside him.

"I gave you an order."

"And you really thought I'd follow it," he said mildly, staring at the false stars. "Thought you knew me, Shepard."

There was a brief silence. He stiffened slightly, his fingers digging into the metal railing.

"I would have done the same if it were anyone else down there. You know that." His mandible twitched. "Just... did what I thought you would."

She looked at him fully. In profile, by the light of the map, he looked stony and cold.

"I know," she said quietly. "And you did."

Garrus turned and met her eyes. He looked as tired as she felt. She rested her hand on his and squeezed gently.

"Just once," she said with a sigh, "I'd like to go on a tour that doesn't end in a waking nightmare."

"We'll get there, Shepard," he said, pushing away from the railing. "Not today, and probably not tomorrow. But we'll get there."

She regarded him skeptically.

"Come on, after all we've done?" Garrus bumped her shoulder with his. "I think we can manage that much."

"We might run into more of those things," she said.

"Or we might never see another again." He shrugged. "Galaxy's a big place, after all."

She huffed. "Since when are you an optimist?"

Something changed in his eyes, bright and blue and honest. "Since you needed me to be."

Shepard felt the last remaining knot in her stomach pull apart, and smiled.

She'd picked a great XO.


End file.
